


That Black Dog Ache

by SaltyWords (agent4hire22)



Series: Through the Gray [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angsty Schmoop, Canon Compliant to 11x05, Canon Divergent after 11x05, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Dom/sub Undertones, Edging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fantasizing, First Time for Everything Fest, Hallucinations, Hurt Dean Winchester, Love Confessions, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Mild Comeplay, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not between Dean/Cas, POV Dean Winchester, Porn with Feelings, Rape Reference, Slow Build Castiel/Dean Winchester, Stand Alone, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:22:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent4hire22/pseuds/SaltyWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simple case turns Dean upside down as he attempts to deal with the effects of a particularly strange love spell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light It

**Author's Note:**

> He dropped the .45 and his hands stumbled to Cas’ face instead. He whined as desperation found him, and he found Cas’ lips, sliding into him like he needed air, devouring the medley of sensation the cold rain and musty leather beside it brought. Cas’ hesitation before sharing it was no more than bated breath, and he was suddenly digging into Dean, his flat palm curling up in a handful of Dean’s shirt. A grunt rattling from the back of his throat as Dean clipped their hips together, twined into him, and caught the swell of his lip. He could taste the absolute in whatever that sweet thing was on his tongue.
> 
> “God, I want you,” Dean confessed. Begged. Fucking pleaded. “I want you so bad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies. Necessary editing to follow.

_I gotta roll, can’t stand still,_

_Got a flame in my heart, can’t get my fill,_

_Eyes that shine burning red,_

_Dreams of you all thru my head._

_-_ Led Zeppelin

_Black Dog_

  
  


Part I

  
  


“You know, getting sucked off is a helluva thing. Probably not one of the worst ways to die,” Dean said, and he wasn’t really sure why, except that he thought Cas should know. He listened to the sputter on the other end of the line, and if he hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought he’d just caught him off guard.

“I thought you were at a crime scene,” Cas rumbled after a moment, the unmistakable crinkle of a chip bag peppering the background, and whispering static through the receiver. 

“I am.” Dean folded the thin blue sheet back over the cadaver. A wordless _goodbye_ to the vacant brown eyes and worsted body at his feet. “What the hell are you doing? Are you eating? Why are you eating?”

“What?” The rustle stilled and Cas went quiet. “No,” he said through a mouthful of food.

“ _No_ doesn’t answer the question, Cas.” 

“Because it’s good?” he offered, taking a hard swallow. 

Dean shrugged and stood, his knees making that lovely grinding sound he was noticing more and more. He’d have to hand Cas that one. No one was looking to argue the healing power of junk food with a witch-fried angel. The magic of Rowena’s guard dog spell had messed him up in more ways than one, and, even though they hadn’t really talked about his angelic inconsistencies as of late, it was obvious he was having a helluva time trying to bounce back.

_One leg in front of the other, Bambi_ , Dean thought as he straightened and glanced across the parking lot, eyed Sam. His brother was sufficiently cornered by the Lieutenant and the on call Medical Examiner. He was fidgety and artless, large gestures and uneasy smiles as his attention darted between the two.

“Get it, Sammy,” Dean muttered, because he could read his brother’s body language from a mile away.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’. He’s getting hit on. He’s almost as awkward as you. Almost. You still take the cake.”

He listened to Cas hum with the gentle tv murmur through the line. “I don’t think it’s restricted to flirting,” he replied and it roused a chuckle from the middle of Dean’s chest. 

“Fair enough. Anyway, I’m gonna miss it, obviously.”

“I figured as much. It’s starting now.”

Dean heard the muffled swell of _Dr. Sexy, MD_ ’s theme music, and he tried but couldn’t quite tamp down the disappointment that he was missing the premier. He knew he wasn’t going to get to see it now. When he missed them, it was all left to fate to show it in repeat three years later while he sat at the edge of a crusty, old bed in some crusty new motel room at three o’clock in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.

“Any leads on the Darkness?” Cas asked nonchalantly, and the chip bag stirred again. 

“Naw.” Dean kicked some gravel, watched it bounce and ricochet off the tire of nearby parked police cruiser. “Sam’s search engine’s a bust, I think. Two wild goose chases and nothing so far.”

“So you found a hunt?”

“No, actually. Local PD heard the Fed blew into town and I guess they decided to kick their feet up and let us do the work. Just a, uh, normal murder, it looks like. Some poor bastard stabbed out front of a strip club by a stripper named Annabelle. Took one in the back while getting it from the front,” he smirked.

“That seems like a very odd name for an exotic dancer,” Cas pointed out, and Dean suddenly imagined him scrolling hungry through websites reading the headliners:

_Destinee_

_Ecstasy_

_Alexxx_

_Nikki_

And his ran a hand down his tie.

“Well, I’d let her know for ya, except they haven’t caught her yet, and I ain’t sticking around to look.” He glanced at the patrol officers standing off to the side, huddled in a little pool of streetlight. One of them had a notepad out, was jotting down something. Bullet points and chicken scratch. The other glanced at him, a little smile catching her lips. Everyone was jumpy. Seemed totally uprooted, and Dean wasn’t sure if it was the small town murder, or the FBI.

“So a wasted two day drive?” Cas asked, bringing it back.

“Not a total bust.” Dean circled the Impala and leaned on the passenger door, crossed a foot as he waited. “At least I got to have breakfast at that little hole-in-the-wall place on I-84.”

“The place outside Kimball with the… sludgy coffee?” Cas’ pause at the end was Dean’s flashing light that he was repeating a description. Dean had obviously talked about it before. He smiled.

“Yeah. Coffee you can just about chew, I swear to God. It’s so good though. Gets me five hours before I gotta stop for another caffeine boost.” 

Cas was quiet on the other end, and Dean figured he’d been sufficiently sucked into the idiot-box. The show’s dialogue floated through the receiver, strangled, but just loud enough that Dean could still make it out.

“ _I don’t know why you can’t be straight with me, Cheryse…”_

“Because she’s gay,” Dean mumbled to himself.

“I don’t think that’s what he meant,” Cas mumbled back.

“The hell it’s not. Is that Manlow?”

“Uh, yes. Dr. Manlow.”

_The conceited, yet handsome black doctor,_ Dean reminded himself. “Yeah, of course it is, because he’s been tryin’ to get with her since season four and it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Apparently he thinks it might. Though, he tries to have sex with everyone, I’ve noticed.”

“Yeah,” Dean smiled again, glanced at his brother, checked his watch. “That’s a gold star lesbian, my friend. Dr. Manlow ain’t even  got an outside shot.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Never been with a dude.”

“Ah,” Cas hummed and the music behind him swelled. The dialogue murmured and Dean strained to hear it. “Do they actually hand stars out for that?” Cas asked suddenly still stuck on the subject. “It seems like that situation could escalate to something unsafe, like _The Scarlet Letter_ , or the way the Nazi’s used to mark the Jewish peo--”

“\--No, Cas,” Dean shook his head. “They don’t actually hand gold stars out.” He stopped and thought about it, the huddle of cops near the body shifting together against the evening wind, another of them meeting Dean’s eye and looking him through. “I mean, I don’t think they do…I don’t really know. Not part of the circle.” 

The chip bag crinkled again, and Dean squinted. “What’re you eating? Better not be my Cheetos.”

Cas sputtered, took a hard swallow, and Dean heard the bag turning in his hands. “...no?”  

“You’re a damn liar. I can hear that Cheetos bag from here.”

“Does it sound different from other bags?”

“Yeah. It sounds like theft and betrayal.”

“I’ll buy you more,” Cas offered.

“It ain’t the same, Cas.”

“You’re being dramatic. It’s manufactured in large quantities under strict recipe and quality assurance. They’re all practically the same.”

Dean glanced up again, caught his brother’s eye. Sam was silently screaming, begging for help. Both women nearly on top of him, hen-pecking and finding excuses to touch his coat, his arm. 

Dean’s eyebrows tipped.

“This hospital doesn’t seem very safe,” Cas said in his ear, pulling him back in. “I would assume Dr. Sexy would be more vigilant about protecting his staff.”

Suddenly there was something about the way he said _sexy_ , all grit up and deadpan rough. It hit Dean hard and slid through him like butter. It ruffled his gut and prickled heat to his face.

_Shit, Cas. Say it again._

Dean blinked surprised and quickly brushed it off. _Gotta do something about the fucking dry spell,_ he thought, clearing his throat. “Why? What happened?”

“Dr. Hillary was hit by a taxi outside. She’s currently dying. Tachycardic and hypovolemic, I believe. Though, I expect it’s the brain trauma we’ll eventually be dealing with.” 

“When the hell’d that happen? I thought Manlow was just tryin’ to get laid.”

“While you were complaining about the Cheetos.”

“See what happens when you steal food?”

“I don’t think they’re related.”

“They are. It’s kismet.” 

Dean licked his lips, his thumb rubbing coltish down the side of his phone, and he suddenly imagined Cas sitting at the end of Sam’s bed, legs dangling as he hung in the blue tv glow. Scattered wrappers and empty beer bottles around him, no effort in cleaning up since no one was home to see it. No worry in the amazing bitch-fit Sam would throw if he ever saw his room just that trashed. Cas probably in his shirtsleeves, no tie, because he’d finally learned the value in getting comfortable, and Dean was pretty damn sure it was only a matter of time before he found the glory in a goddamn bathrobe and pair of slippers too.

That hollow spot in his chest suddenly checked in, and he wished he could see him. The thought of Cas in that careless wrapper mess was instantly the only thing Dean wanted in his life. The visual of him, bed-tressed and bleary. TV lethargic and junk food-stuffed. 

He shook his head hard again, eyes darting wide through the lot as he muscled the lump in his throat down. “Uh,” he stumbled and his breath caught when Cas sighed.

_What the hell’s the matter with me?_

“Anyway,” he said gingerly, and for a moment he was afraid he’d lose the base in his voice. “Take notes, buddy. I gotta go save Sam from himself.” 

“Call if you need anything.”

Dean pocketed his phone and straightened out. Felt the pull in his upper back. He was still stiff from the drive. Could probably use a drink or two to even himself out. He glanced his watch again and stooped back down to the body, pulled back the sheet. His mouth felt thick, his brain a little molted, as his head tipped to the drooling red mess in the center of the vic’s chest.

_Right through the heart…_

A gunshot suddenly cut the air, and Dean reeled, caught sight of Sam’s shock as blood splatter turned him abstract and the ME hit the asphalt in a pile. Dean ran as Sam grabbed for the Lieutenant's gun and she went for him, dropped it and wrapped around his shoulders, kissed him hard. Dean pulled her off and suddenly all the cops were on top of them. A dirty, frazzled pile of red faces and shouting. 

Another officer wrestled her to the ground and Dean shoved his brother back, out of the pandemonium, both hands protectively at his chest. “What the hell?” he screamed, looking Sam through. Searching for anything. Bleeding, cuts, a fucking bruise. 

“I don’t know!” Sam careened the back of his wrist over his face and smeared the splatter. His eyes were wide and wild, his hair puffing in front of his face as it sagged heavy with blood.

“Are you good?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not shot.”

“He’s for me!” the lieutenant screamed from the ground, Dean looked over and she had eyes on him. A death glare that could skin a cat. 

“What’d she say to you?”

“Nothing. I mean. She wanted a date--and the,” Sam looked down at the body near his feet, the shuffle of cops around it, hands all over. “the, uh, lieutenant had asked first.”

Dean frowned, looked through his brother as if he hadn’t heard him right. “A date?”

Sam nodded.

“They both wanted a date?”

Sam shrugged. 

Another officer pulled up behind Dean. “We need a statement,” he said, and Dean turned. 

“Gimme a minute.” But when he looked up, the officer licked his lips, his hand crawling up to his button-high collar and fingering it.

“No problem,” he said with a sweep of sweet in his tone. He trailed a finger down the front of his uniform, brushed over the blue fabric, lightly, slowly, trailing down. Over his stomach, to his belt, down over his zipper. His lips fell apart as he touched himself, and Dean pulled his eyes away, swung back to Sam panic brewing in his chest.

“What the hell is he doing?”

Sam was looking down at the body. Everyone had given up. Now there was just radio muffle around her and silence in her eyes. He glanced up, over to the officer and then back to Dean. “What?”

“What the fuck is he doing?” Dean whispered.

“Standing there.”

“No. He’s,” Dean glanced back again and caught a saccharine smile in the gut. “He’s fucking with me,” he said quickly. “He’s… ” Dean gestured down his stomach then stopped when the confusion on Sam’s face crossed over into worry. “Never mind.” 

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Let’s just,” he shuffled and his eyes fell on the original victim again. “Something’s not right. Wrap this up, we’ll take it to go,” he gaffed brushing past the officer, doing his best to ignore the little moan he made as Dean left. 

+

“So, even weirder, The Lieutenant and ME were probably friends,” Sam mumbled from behind Dr. Weider’s desk. He flipped through her notebook and looked up. “I mean, it’s fair to say they at least knew each other. They’ve both got notes all over this journal spanning all the way back through early last year when Dr. Weider started this one. It’s all very non-formal stuff. Helpful things for the autopsies, probably.”

Dean was staring at the body again, still shrouded in the black body bag, it’d been dropped off on the exam table and the two of them were left with it.

“You know, it’s a really small town, Dean. There are, what? Less than fifteen people total in the Harney County Law Enforcement, and even fewer trained medical examiners. They were roughly the same age, I think. I mean, if they grew up here, I think it’s safe to say they must have even gone to school together.”

Dean pulled the zipper and frowned down at the body again, cocked his head at the stab wound and started unbuttoning the stained cotton shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“An exam.”

“Shouldn’t we just wait for the medical examiner?”

“To what? Pull up a table? She’s dead.”

Sam looked away. “Not her. Her replacement,” he said quietly.

“There’s just something about this guy that keeps bugging my brain,” Dean mumbled, ignoring him.

Sam kicked off the swivel chair and pulled up alongside. Dean the shirt open and they both sighed.

“What’s that look like to you, Sammy?” Dean lured popping an eyebrow.

“Angel blade.”

“Exactly, except this guy wasn’t an angel. No BBQ wings outside the _Candy Cane_. So why we suddenly got _stabbed by an angel_ over here, and otherwise normal people magically losing their mind over you?”

Sam frowned. “Lust and angels? Why does this seem familiar?”

“Because it is.”

“Cupid?” Sam sighed again.

“Only one way to find out,” Dean smiled, passing his brother the rib cutters. 

+

There it was, plain as day as Sam turned the cold lump of muscle over. “That what I think it is?”

Dean shook his head, pulled out his phone and snapped a quick picture of the small, embedded symbol. “Let’s find out,” he whisked it off, and a moment later his phone rang.

He hit speaker, and Cas’ voice rumbled through, husky and serious. “Where’d you get that?”

“The original dead guy,” Dean said. “A one Mr. Gordon Harvey, if that matters. That what it looks like?”

“It’s the Enochian symbol for love, if that’s what you mean, but--”

“\--Great,” Dean mumbled. “All the way to Oregon, no Darkness, and now we have to deal with Heaven’s diapered third-string players. At least we snagged ourselves a case.”

“No, Dean. You don’t understand. The symbol-- it’s warped. That’s bad. That’s very bad. You need to keep that body quarantined before it spreads.”

Dean straightened and glanced at his brother.

“What do you mean by spread?” Sam asked, calling over the table of open plastic containers and the reek of formalin. “We talking plague or…?”

“The cherub’s arrow works within a person a lot like a virus. It invades and becomes one with the host, but if it mutates, or, in this case, is born of a warped mark, it can invoke a kind of love chaos as the magic tries to right itself. It could hypothetically spread to susceptible people in an attempt to complete the cycle.”

“So, what? We looking for a town full of horny cougars on the prowl?”

Sam frowned. "Neither of them were old," he mumbled.

No. Animals would likely not be affected,” Cas grumbled. “But, I don’t actually know that much about it. I didn’t really have anything to do with the Cherub order when I was… before I was--”

“Cas,” Dean cut him off. Didn’t want him to dwell on his recent expulsion from Heaven. Though he hadn’t said much about it yet, Dean knew it pained him, regardless of whether he belonged there anymore or not. It was still difficult to lose something. Family or home, or whatever it was to him, it had been something for a long time. And, just like his vessel, he’d need some time to sit with it before things started patching themselves back up.

_One foot in front of the other,_ he thought again. “Focus.”

“Uh, anyway, yes,” he cleared his throat. “If it did spread, you might be dealing with some hyper-hormonal people.”

“And we stop it how? Industrial sized spray bottles?” Dean smirked.

“Hormonal could mean hyper violent as well as hyper-sexual, Dean,” Cas clarified. 

“I guess that would go to explain Lieutenant Braxton’s reaction,” Sam said. “She was exposed to the body just like the medical examiner was. But, so were we, and a slew of other people at the crime scene.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed sneaking a glance at Sam, hoping to see some tell in his face. Something that said everything wasn’t cherry for him either. “So what are we talking about here? We supposed to be corralling everyone who came in contact with this body?”

“No, not everyone would be weak to the love spell,” Cas said and Dean shrugged his head back.

_Motherfucker…_

Sam shuffled, his eyes bouncing to Dean then back down to the phone again. “Who would?” 

“The usual lovesick types, probably,” Cas confirmed. “The type of people who’d really covet a partner.”

Dean tried to take a nonchalant step back, but Sam pegged him anyway.

“You better step a lot further away than that,” he said under his breath.

_Yeah, too late,_ he thought, but rolled his eyes and scoffed instead.

Cas’ voice went thin as he stood, stretched, the murmur of the tv going out as he walked from the room. “In any case, I don’t know how to stop it just yet. Let me do some digging and I’ll come meet you,” Cas chirped.

Dean perked, moved back toward his phone. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it? I mean, it’s a long drive.”

He wanted to see him. God, he wanted to see him. He didn’t realize how bad until the idea of Cas walking through their motel door graced his imagination. His stomach squirmed.

“Yes. I’m basically buried in empty junk food wrappers at this point. I think if I don’t get out of the bunker soon I might be the first angel to die of coronary disease.” 

“I don’t think that’s physically possible,” Dean smiled, then pulled it back when he saw the way Sam was watching him.

“Well, I’m certainly working toward it,” Cas added.

“How you gettin’ here, though? No car, remember?”

“I’ll take something from the garage.”

_Oh, shit. Not the classics._

“Oh... uh, yeah,” Dean rubbed the back of his neck, shuffled. “Just--you know--not the, uh. Cas, don’t take the Morris. It’s not--”

“\--which one is that?”

“The black one in stall thirty-three.”

“Okay. I do like that red one next to it.”

“Oh, yeah, no. Don’t take that one either. She’s--” Dean stuttered. Tried to think of an excuse.

“\--Dean, you know I’ve never crashed a car.”

Dean stole another glance at Sam who’d lost interest and was staring down at an open container of plucked guts, dried blood still clinging in his hair.

“Well, that’s not true,” Cas corrected under his breath. “I did crash one car, but I wasn’t the one driving it at the time, and in my defense, I was trying to kill someone.”

“That’s not… that’s not a good defense.”

“Yeah, Okay. See you soon, Cas. Drive safe,” Sam suddenly popped off the examination stool, swiped Dean’s phone and clicked it off. Tossed it back as soon as the screen went black.

“Cranky,” Dean mumbled. He surveyed the morgue, spotted a roll of large white labels on the edge of Dr. Weider’s desk and slapped one on drawer four, pulled a fine-point Sharpie and wrote _Quarantine_. 

“Ain’t it grand?” he said turning. “Love is like a virus. Straight from heaven’s mouth.”

+

“ _Fill me up_?” The bartender asked slipping a neon pink bra strap off her shoulder as she shuffled on her tired feet.

“Huh?” Dean sputtered the ass of his beer and some dribbled down his chin. In hindsight, he was quickly realizing, he shouldn’t have gone out. “Come again?”

“Need another fill?” she said again and as Dean blinked, he realized both sides of her straps were still in tact, firm on her shoulders.

“Yeah, actually make it a, uh, whiskey... double.” Dean slid his empty glass to the edge of the table and realized Sam was watching him. “Sammy?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you,” Sam said taking a light sip of his mostly full beer. He’d barely gotten through the head. “How’re you feeling, Dean?”

“Fine.” His voice caught in his throat as the patron behind Sam, a busty blonde woman winked at him, pouted her lips, only to be followed up by a thin man, dark hair and glasses. Pitcher of beer in one hand, the other sliding nonchalantly over the bulge in his pants. He glanced at Dean with a coy tip in his lips and Dean stumbled his eyes to the table again.

“Are you sure? Because, you seem a little jumpy.”

“Is there a lot of people in here? It seems like there’s a lot of people in here,” Dean stammered.

“Why?”

“It’s just--”

Dean’s pocket buzzed and he stole every opportunity to dive for it, yank his phone out.

Dean frowned, checked his watch. The time was at the top of his phone, but it was a habit he couldn’t seem to break.

Cas was making crazy good time. Travelling dead of the night was always the best time saver. No eight-to-fivers mulling through the street moaning and groaning about their normal fucking lives clogging up traffic and being otherwise completely annoying.

Apparently, he was looking for the diner they’d talked about earlier. He’d gotten his tastebuds back, and it would seem, he was going to take Dean up on his declaration that that roadside diner made the best bad coffee around. Dean shifted in his seat. 

Yeah, it was J’s. Just across Nord Street behind the Seventy-Six with that shell of a Dairy Queen attached to the back. No other sit down food options til Pine Bluffs, about another twenty-odd miles down the interstate. It was a miracle Dean had ever found the place at all, much less gotten the chance to pin it a valuable stop.

But, he wanted to be the one to take Cas there.

He wanted to see his face when he wrapped his fingers around one of those chipped tan ceramic mugs, manufactured and distributed straight out of 1982. In full use rotation since production and purchase. 

The place was a time capsule. The booths. The cracked plastic bar stools. Cas wouldn’t appreciate it on his own like he could with Dean there to point the good parts out.

His fingers stalled over the message bar. They slid from the smart-text _yes_ back to the keyboard.

He pressed send, and caught his breath as he read it back.

_Jesus Christ. Just ask for a date, why don’t ‘cha,_ he berated. Still, he waited anxiously, shifted in his seat, and finally Cas replied: 

“Cas is burning tinder,” Dean said sitting back with a smile, relief somehow mushed up in all the anxiety. “Says he’ll be here by ten.” He thought about pocketing his phone, but quickly reconsidered. _What if he texts again?_ He laid it on his thigh under the table instead.

“So, are we gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“You,” Sam said, eyebrows edging up. “You’re infected.”

“What? I am not.”

The bartender came back over, set his double down, licked the spillover from her finger with a quick and gratuitous deep-throat plunge. It pulled slowly from her crimson lips, then trailed down her chest, disappearing between her breasts, pulling the edge of her shirt--

A sharp kick to the shin brought Dean back out of it and he realized his mouth was hanging open. The bartender was just standing there, irritated frown on her face, hands on her hips. Finger in cleavage omitted. 

“Anything else?” she said, and Dean was pretty sure that wasn’t the first time she’d asked.

“Uh, no. Nope. I’m--this is…”

“He’s fine, thank you,” Sam cut in.

“At least one of you is articulate,” she grumbled before walking away.

“Then what the hell was that? You’re bug-eyed at every woman in here. And… that guy, for some reason.”

Dean glanced over to the dark-haired guy from earlier, and didn’t keep his eyes around long enough to see if anything risque happened. “What guy?” he lied. “Whatever, Sam. You know me. I’m just a sucker for the game. Like huntin’ black dogs at night; just a helluva challenge. Just scoutin’ for the nightly challenge.”

“All you ever catch is shadows,” Sam said flatly. “Come on, I need to know. Remember, Cas said you could experience hyper-violence too. You have to tell me so I know if you’re gonna suddenly pull your gun and try to blow someone’s head off. Because I’m about full-up on that this weekend.”

Dean chewed his cheeks. Back behind the bar, the bartender suddenly popped the first three buttons of her shirt and her lacy pink bra jumped out in the dim light. She ran a hand down the front of her, her fingers curling over the swell of her breast, down her stomach. She teased the tail of her shirt from her pants and looked up at him with heavy eyes.

Dean swallowed hard and turned away. 

“Okay, fine. Yes,” he admitted. “Either that bartender is an awesome stripper as her second job and she wants to give me a free show, or I might be halluc--”

“\--I fucking knew it--”

“\--Might be!” He kicked back the double and the whiskey burn curled through his nose.

“She isn’t stripping, Dean. She’s fully clothed. You see her stripping?”

“I _maybe_ see her stripping, okay?” He caught Sam’s discontent and threw it back. “Like, nothing bad, though. PG-13, tops! Innocent, dude! It just jarrs in and out. No big deal.”

“Yeah, maybe it’s not bad now, but what if it gets worse? Maybe it starts slow and speeds up, gets more intense.”

Dean smirked. “That’s how you’re supposed to do it, Sammy.”

“Dean. Really?”

“Look, I’m sorry. There’s a bunch of hot chicks in here. Is it really that different from regular me? It’s just regular me with enhanced imagination! Relax.”

“Is it everyone?”

“No.”

That flat expression again. Like someone just told him the only song he was going to hear for the next twenty-four hours was _Heat of the Moment_ by Asia, then Sam suddenly pulled his tie loose, popped the top button on his shirt collar.

“Whoa!” Dean shouted, threw his hands out. “No!”

A smile cracked through Sam’s face, malicious as ever. “I was just checking.”

“Dude. What the actual fuck? No. You think I’d just be sitting here if that was happening?”

“So, what? Is it just people you’re attracted to that trigger the hallucinations?”

“Are you using me as research? Am I just a fucking clue to you?” Sam’s non-answer was his answer. “Yes,” Dean said after a beat of unnerving eye contact. “It’s just the hot people.” 

“So the bartender?”

“Yes.”

“The cougar behind me with the,” Sam swooped his hands over his chest discreetly.

“It might be quicker to just assume all the wom--”

“\--That guy?” he asked with high eyebrows and a popped thumb.

“What? Fuck off.”

“Oh my God, okay, wait,” Sam said, his hands coming back down onto the table, his face lighting up. “The cop back at the crime scene?”

“Yeah… okay.” Dean slid out of the booth. “Have fun walking back to the motel, asshole.”


	2. Stoke It

Part II

  
  


  
  


Dean eyed the mini fridge again and flicked halfheartedly at the only thing left: a cheap plastic four-ouncer of HRD. It was basically rubbing alcohol. Smelled like it. Tasted like it. It was shit.

“Stop. Would you stop? It’s ten in the morning,” Sam badgered. “Have a beer or something.”

Dean sighed. His nerves itched. He had to take the edge off and that little taste-tester wasn’t going to do it. “Why don’t we have anything to drink?”

“What’re you talking about? There’s a cooler full of beer right there.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t mean like a breakfast-drink. I mean like a relax-drink.”

Sam snapped his laptop shut and looked up. “Dean, that whole statement is so problematic, I’m not even gonna touch it.” He checked his watch and glanced out the dusty flowered drapes.

“He said ten,” Dean mumbled ticking his phone screen on for the hundredth time that morning.

_No new texts._

“Man, I’m going stir crazy. Can we go somewhere?”

Sam shook his head. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet, so you get to stay put until Cas gets here.”

“We didn’t even have breakfast.”

“What are you, five?”

Dean snuffed a whine and shuffled to the window, pushed the curtain to the side and watched an older lady-- a little thicker, big glasses, hair up--strut her way to the manager’s office. He waited. Trailed her as she moved.

_I could make it work,_ he lied to himself, and when she kept all her clothes on and didn’t glance his direction with a pair of pouty lips, he felt better. 

“I haven’t had any hallucinations-- or whatever-- all morning," he said quickly.

“You’ve been in the motel room all morning. That doesn’t count.”

“Yeah, well, I have eyes, Sam.” He gestured to the window as Sam leaned back, hooked a finger on the curtain.

“Who? Her?” He looked back at Dean skeptically.

“Older ladies are a real wild card, Sammy. It’s worth a draw. All I’m sayin’.”

“Yeah, apparently not.”

Dean groaned, threw open the cooler, and reluctantly grabbed a beer. He popped the cap and watched it hit the floor, didn’t bother to pick it up. Silently hoped Sam would step on it later, because petty was the name of the game, and Dean was playing for keeps.

He shuffled back to the window and leaned against the frame just as a slick red bike pouted into the lot. He watched it pull in next to the Impala, and took a sip as the rider--black leather jacket and blackout helmet--kicked the stand and rested his foot on the asphalt. 

Dean’s eyes sat hungry on him, on the way the twist of sunlight licked the beaded rain on his jacket. It did a better job of reminding Dean there’d been a storm than the wet parking lot did.

Something tickled his chest as he ate through the black silhouette, and a feeling bordering lust settled into his core. He dragged a finger down the cool bottle in his hand and imagined it was traveling the rider’s thigh. Thought about what it would be like to taste his finger after it slipped from his knee. The condensation from the glass was suddenly the rain dribbling from his jacket as Dean crawled onto the bike. It soaked through his jeans, ran like tears down his naked forearms when he pulled the helmet up just enough to see the smile on the rider’s lips. 

_Just like unwrapping a present._

Then, just as easily, he saw himself leaning forward to bury a hot kiss into the curve of his jaw, feel the heat of his skin. 

Taste his lips.

Heat bloomed in Dean’s chest, and a bolt of pleasure kicked a shiver into his spine. The visual slowly... gingerly faded away, brought him back inside, window frame digging into his ribcage, one hand holding onto his beer for dear life, the other teasing at his zipper. 

He blinked. 

_Okay, maybe not out of the woods_ , he realized, that ever-growing seed of dread rooting into his nerves.

That hallucination was different. It wasn’t flirty and quick like the others. It'd been heavy, intimate, and quiet. The rider hadn’t stripped, hadn't done anything, actually. It was Dean. It had been all Dean. All unfurled desire and unshakable want. It hadn’t just moved his pulse, but his fingers as well.

Sweat played down his spine and he quickly shook his hand out. He side-eyed his brother and was relieved to see him entrenched in something on his phone.

_You’re good,_ he told himself. _It’s fine. You’re inside, not in the parking lot mounting a ‘57 Hydra-Glide with a custom leather seat._ _Cherry red, like the one back at the bunk--_

Dean squinted and his stomach dropped out. “Fuck me,” he whispered under his breath, regretting his word choice before he was done. “That’s Cas…”

“Huh?”

Dean watched as Cas tipped the helmet off, his hair wild, his blue eyes catching the sun and bottling it. Dean tried to shove his heart back down, clear his throat. “Cas,” he said again, as if that was the part Sam missed. “He, uh, took one of the Harleys, apparently.”

Sam twisted around, pushed back the other side of the curtains and peered out. He chuckled. “I guess that explains the travel time.”

Dean’s pulse drowned out his ears as a wave of terror washed him.

_I’m in trouble,_ he realized. _I’m in so much fucking trouble. How did I not see this coming? Fuck._

He couldn’t let Cas find out. It was the last thing he needed in the fucking world was for him--or Sam-- to realize the hallucinations were happening _about Cas_. 

“Just… don’t tell him I’m infected,” Dean begged trying to will the wild from his eyes. 

“What? Why?”

“Because, you know,” he stuttered, “it’s his first one back off the bench again and I don’t want him to feel like it’s a big deal.” 

Cas slipped off the motorcycle, hung his helmet and scanned the room numbers. Absently combed his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t shaved. He’d been driving all night and he was all tousled hair and stubble.

“You owe me,” Dean begged quickly. 

“For what?”

His stomach was a ball of knots. “Because, I don’t know, pick a reason, Sam! Just do it!”

Sam’s eyebrows slid together and Dean realized he was probably being transparent. 

“He doesn’t need to know. It’s just embarrassing,” Dean relented, hoping it was enough give for Sam to take. 

“Okay, fine. Relax.” Sam leaned the chair onto its back legs and tapped the window, waved, stole one more glance Dean’s way before unfolding himself and hopping up.

+

Dean’s heart squirmed in his chest the moment Cas walked through the grungy motel room door. The smell of the old leather jacket wafting in with him, the pop of blue in his eyes was electric against the pathetic shades of gold comprising the motel’s color palette. Dean sat back into one of the dining chairs-- well, _fell_ into a chair-- as Cas came in, but he hoped it’d looked controlled. 

“How’d it drive?” Sam asked with a smile. He shut the door and they met in a quick, comfortable hug.

“It reminds me a bit of flying, so that’s nice.” Cas' eyes pulled easily over Dean’s way, and they drilled a sharp shiver through his sternum. “Hello, Dean.”

“H-Hey.” Dean cleared his throat, got caught in Cas’ eyes like sticky bubblegum. Cas’ mouth tipped up at the edges and he unzipped his jacket slowly. The teeth popped as the heavy zipper cut it’s way down. The sides swung loose as that striped blue tie peeked out. 

Dean swallowed. “I like the, uh--the new-- Where’s your trench coat?”

“ _Home,”_ he said quietly. “ _I switched it for you.”_

“For--huh? What?”

Cas glanced at Sam and shrugged. “Yeah. Rain. It’s a good thing I did. I ran into a lot of it on the way here. I’ll put it back when I get home, if you want.” He shook the water from it and slid it from his shoulders. Hung it on a kitchen chair. His suit jacket was off. He stood in just his shirtsleeves and tie, wrinkled from the ride.

“It’s fine, Cas,” Sam said plopping back down at the table and flipping his laptop open. “No one’s using it. It’s all yours.”

“I do like it, though it doesn’t really work with my suit. I had to pack it.”

“So change the suit. Never too late to shake it up,” Sam said and Cas smiled.

“Like bad medicine?”

Dean perked back up. _He just make a Bon Jovi reference? No… just stay out of it._ He planted his eyes on the tabletop, like the laminated wood finish was the Mona Lisa of dilapidated motel furniture.

Sam cleared his throat, and Dean could feel his eyes burning into him. 

_Be normal, for fucksake,_ he screamed. _Just say hello. Don’t be a dick. Make it quick and sit back down and drink your way through it. Like God intended._

He shook his shoulders loose, took a quick swig of beer and found his feet. “Anyway… bout time you got here,” he said shortly. He pulled Cas in for a hug and the moment their chests bumped, adrenaline poured to his fingertips. Their cheeks brushed and Dean unintentionally gripped the front of Cas' shirt on dismount, caught his tie, his fingers fumbling and thick. His throat catching as, in an instant, he imagined turning just enough to lock his lips in a full, heavy kiss.

He fought his hand loose and sat quickly back down, took a long drag from his beer. Sam was still watching him and there was something more blooming behind those curious eyes this time. He was finally matching the colors on that Rubik's cube together, and Dean had laid all the moves out for him. 

G _oddammit,_ it was hard to hide your shame when something else had the wheel. 

_Just relax,_ he told himself. _Just look at the fucking table. Only look at the fucking table._

“So I did some digging,” Cas continued after a moment, running his hand down his crooked shirt, pulling his tie straight. “What you’re dealing with here isn’t a typical cupid’s mark mutation, as I suspected. This mark’s been intentionally altered.”

“What do you mean?” Sam shifted and the table creaked. Dean watched his beer shiver on the tabletop.

“You’re familiar with the way the original cupid’s mark works? A predetermined pair of people is identified. They’re marked, they fall in love, the spell completes.”

“Yeah,” Sam said.

“With this one, there’s no predetermined pair. This one radiates out from the infected individual. It simultaneously helps the victim look for a mate and potentially jumps to others who’re susceptible to the magic so they go out and do the same.”

“Behavior altering kind of stuff?”

“Yes. They can become unpredictable, impulsive, even violent.”

“Hallucinations?” Sam asked.

“Possibly. Are people hallucinating?”

Dean felt the pause in the air thick as cotton. Sam was waiting for him to speak up. When he didn’t, Sam said, “yeah. Not like the-neighbor’s-dog-telling-them-to-murder kind of hallucinations, but… seeing people stripping, for example.”

Cas shrugged. “Objectification of a human body is a very primal result from the desire to mate, isn’t it? Everyone does it to some extent. The spell could amplify that desire and turn it into hallucinations. That on it’s own could grow into bigger problems.”

“Like spikes in sexual assault,” Sam said.

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “ Or, even territorial behavior depending on a number of factors. Murder.”

“How many infected do you think?”

“Did you quarantine the body?”

Sam nodded.

“Then, hopefully not many. Most people wouldn’t be able to contract it. Just the despondent few who had direct contact with the body.”

Sam shifted in his chair and Dean bit at the insides of his cheeks. He didn’t need Sam’s silence to point out the chasm of difference between them. Sam didn’t get infected, but Dean did. 

_Awesome. Another check mark in the ‘pathetic’ column._

“So, at least we have that,” Cas added.

Dean could feel the pause in his voice. The stilted omissions. “Now’s the part where you spill all the important stuff,” he said looking down at his fingernails.

Cas sighed and it rumbled through the room. “The goal of any love spell is to be completed,” he continued. “Until then, it’s unstable. Once the victim’s found a match and the two complete the spell, the mark becomes permanent. When this one becomes permanent, it’ll essentially tattoo something called _Essence of the Celestial_ into that person’s soul,” he paused and Dean could see him run his hands over the curve of a chair back. “It’ll turn them into a low tier angel.”

“Permanently?” Dean’s eyes shot off the table and got stuck up in Cas’ face again. Everything in it told him to stay right there, and he couldn’t pull them back out.

“I don’t know,” Cas said. His cadence slowed, his voice sweetened, his body turning to Dean. “But I can tell you, among other things, the children they’d produce would be Nephilim.”

He strode closer, the drapes caught the filtered sunlight and threw a shadow across his cheek as he moved. Soft and slow. His fingers brushed along the curve of Dean’s shoulders, up to his neck, fingertips kissing the sensitive hairs at the nape. 

_Shit._

Then, he balanced himself and swung a leg over Dean’s legs, straddled him, and slowly lowered himself down into Dean’s lap. “ _Hi,”_ he mouthed with a smile.

The weight of him kicked more than a couple sloppy thoughts through Dean’s head and he was helpless to stop them: Cas on top of him, sucking a mark into his neck. Getting those long fingers down the front of his jeans and telling him exactly what he wanted to do… 

_Oh, shit..._

“Why would some rogue cupid want that?” Sam asked, and he somehow seemed further away.

Cas’ eyes burned through Dean, bouncing through his face hungry for every freckle. “I don’t think a rogue cupid is behind it,” he said quietly. He said it to Dean even though it was Sam who’d asked. He looked at him like he was the only other thing in the room, then reached up and touched the back of his neck again. The warmth of Cas’ hand spilled chills through Dean’s chest as he slowly trailed his fingers down. Over Dean’s collarbone, down his pec, under the curve of his shirt collar. “I think it’s Heaven,” he continued. “I think they’re trying to rebuild the Heroes of Old army to fight the Darkness.”

“The giants that the book of Enoch talks about? They actually existed?”; Sam again.

Cas stretched his chin up, gave Dean a good view of his lean neck and the curve of the tendons begging for the touch of lips. “Yes,” he said. Dean watched his adam's apple move as he spoke. “God had them wiped out when they decided to rebel from him. But, it would seem all bets are off, now. With the Darkness out, anything goes.”

He grabbed Dean’s hand and pulled it up to his chest, laid it over his heart and Dean could swear he felt a pulse under that firm bend of muscle. 

_That’s just mine. This isn't happening._

“They were an incredibly good army,” he cooed pulling Dean’s hand down his shirt, the valley between his pecs, his diaphragm, stomach, belt. “ _Touch me, Dean,”_ he whispered.

_Oh, fuck._ Dean jerked his hand away and balled it into his stomach, took a gratuitous swig of beer to chase the shiver of adrenaline, and drained it.

_This isn’t happening. You’re imagining it._ He glanced at the cooler. Wished to God he had another beer. _I shoulda just drank the fucking taster vodka._

“Do we know how the spell completes?” Sam asked from somewhere in the corner of the room. 

He’d faded into the background. His questions were just ambient noise inside the blue of Cas’ eyes. The weight of his body. The skim of his tie as he suddenly leaned into Dean, brushed his nose alongside Dean’s. Their lips close enough to coax the electricity between them into tantrums. 

Dean choked down a swallow. The tension squirmed his stomach and parted his lips. He wanted to taste him.

Cas suddenly swung his head to the side and the world slowed as Dean got a full roll of his smell. Anything and everything that was clinging to the hollow beside his jaw. The ruddy, old leather jacket, the fresh cotton dryer sheets. The clean rain he’d rode through. Gasoline and decaying leaves.

He smelled like the open road.

“ _Sex_ ,” Cas whispered into Dean’s ear. The curl of his voice pet a shudder through his gut. Dean’s shoulders jumped, he squeezed his eyes shut, his teeth clacking together. “The spell’s completed through intimacy,” Cas said again.

Dean sat back. The chair back digging into his shoulder blades. “How do we stop it?” he choked, his voice getting tangled up with his unruly heartbeat. He felt a bead of sweat roll down his temple and Cas watched it, eyelids heavy, and smiled.

“ _You don’t want to stop it, Dean. Why would you stop it?”_ He tracked Dean back and licked it from his face. His tongue was hot, his fingers playing at the bottom of Dean’s shirt, skirting just at the edge of skin. “ _You finally have me. And I know you want it.”_ He grabbed Dean’s hand again, slipped it under the pulled tail of his shirt, onto his stomach, fit it onto his bare side. “ _Tell me you want it,”_ he whispered.

Dean huffed a sharp breath as his fingers found hold on Cas’ skin. He shifted in his chair, tried to will the edging desire down. Tried to tell his anatomy it wasn’t the place or the time to play games, but it wanted nothing to do with rational thought. It was all hung up in Cas’ pink lips and that coy smile sitting heady at the edges of them. Dean chased him forward, felt their lips brush again before Cas pulled back. “ _You have to listen,”_ he said breathy and thick. “ _Tell me you want it.”_

Dean’s chest hitched. He nodded, erratic and quick.

“ _Tell me.”_

He shifted his hips and Dean squirmed against the grate at his zipper.

“God, yes. I want it.” 

“Whoa, hey, Dean!” Sam clapped his hands and Dean looked up surprised, faded back into the room. Blinked. Sam was staring at him wide-eyed, jaw slack. Cas was still standing near his chair, one hand curled over the back of it frowning. 

Dean felt another bead of sweat roll from his hairline and play down his neck.

“Are you all right?” Cas asked, his voice deep again, solid.

“Yeah, Dean. Why are you sweating?” Sam baited loudly.

Dean glanced between them, felt his heartbeat in his throat. His dick was hard, his hand over top of it, but thankfully the table hid him. He moved his fingers as a cold chill suddenly washed over him. Panic.

_Fuck my life and everything about it. Fuck my eyes for leaving the goddamn table._

“Are you sick?” Cas asked again.

“No, nope--” Dean stood, thought better of it and sat back down again. He wiped both hands down his mouth, avoided Sam. “Headache. Just a, uh--”

“Oh, do you want me to--?” Cas lifted two fingers.

“No!” Dean yelled, laughed, held a palm out and tried to nonchalantly shoo him away. “No you stay...uh, just stay over...there,” he said. “That’s probably close-- 

“How do we stop? Sam? The, uh--”

Sam looked back at him, eyebrows up so far, Dean was sure they’d pop right off the top. “The love spell?” he asked after he was sure to let Dean stammer a moment.

“Yeah. That.”

“Burn the body.”

“Whose body?”

“...Harvey’s.”

“Right.” Dean bounced a finger. “Harvey’s. The, uh, contagion monkey. Right. Makes sense. What the hell are we sitting around for?” He pushed quickly out from his chair, bumped the table, eyes on the door. “Cas, take the bike,” he said as he passed.

+

The cold wind whipped his shirt and dragged the heat from his flushed skin. His mind was racing. Adrenaline had his fingers shaking, he was sure he was about to puke out his heart.

He reached the Impala and wrenched the door handle. It was locked. He felt his jeans, nothing. He’d left his keys -- _coat-_ -in the room.

_FUCK!_

He kicked a tire and someone walking through the lot glanced at him. He pulled his hands through his hair, covered his face, and suddenly Sam was near him. “Shut the fuck up,” he preemptively snapped. “Just don’t.”

The wind tossed Sam’s hair around and his arms opened in an easy shrug. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That's what you're going with? You realize you were talking, right? Like, out loud."

Dean’s stomach dropped out.“Shut up, or I swear to God I’ll eat a fucking bullet.” He wrenched the door handle again and Sam held up the keys. “Give ‘em to me.”

“Just talk to me for a second.”

Dean clenched his jaw, looked away. “Gimme the keys.”

“You’re not driving.”

Dean growled, relented, and moved to the passenger side, his hands stuttering fists at his side. “Then, open the car, Sammy.”

“Would you just relax a minute?”

“Open the goddamn car!”

Sam shook his head, hands up, mouth smashed into a thin line. That same stupid expression that said _you’re being a fucking child_ in every way. He unlocked the car and slid in, pulled the passenger side open. 

Dean flopped into the seat with a sigh, covered his face. “Where is he?” he asked just to break the glaring silence.

“He’s gonna take the Harley, like you asked.” Sam turned the engine over, pretended to check a mirror. “He doesn’t know where the morgue is so he’s gonna follow.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, but I should have. Better yet, maybe you should.”

“No. It doesn’t matter. We’ll burn the corpse and it’ll be done. And we’ll never talk about it again.”

“Great,” Sam nodded. “Healthy.”

“Yup.”

“You know, this is kinda exactly what I was talking about before. Having something more. Maybe you shouldn’t ignore--”

Dean jerked up and sneered. “Cas isn’t--” He scoffed. “We’re not talking about this! I’m not talking about this!”

  
  


Cas finally popped out of the motel room and fumbled with the old-fashioned skeleton key as he tried to get it in the lock. All the chipped edges caught on the lock slide. Dean watched him and ran a hand down his mouth again. He couldn’t seem to look at Cas without touching his own lips. His hands went to his face every time.

A splat of rain suddenly popped against the windshield, bloated and cold, it spattered the glass. Another, and Dean leaned into the dash, looked up, saw the dark clouds opening up. The Impala’s roof suddenly pinged like cats on tin, bled Dean’s view of Cas hunched at the door. He gripped onto his jeans, his fingers tight and troubled.

“It’s raining,” Sam mumbled.

“Sports after the weather?”

Sam kicked the wipers on and the water smeared away in time to see Cas pull his collar up, glance at the car. A brush of wind rolled some fallen leaves under his feet.

_God, I’m such a dick._

“I’m just saying--”

“I know what you’re saying.”

Sam sighed and threw himself back into the seat. Plucked the heater on and the vent coughed a breath of fog up onto the glass, clouding Dean’s view of Cas altogether. 

_Is he still at the door?_ He chewed his nail bed, rocked in the seat, eyes fixed on the windshield.

“You jonesin’ for a hit there, Ozzy?”

He glanced back. “God, Sam. Shut up.” Dropped his hand from his mouth and his fingers found their way to worrying at his pants again. “Just go. He’ll find it.”

“Can you seriously not wait thirty seconds?”

The wipers smeared another rainbow shape of clear space, and the fog faded away enough to reveal a big pink umbrella in the middle of the lot, held high next to Cas, a woman hunched below it. The two of them talking.

Dean straightened, his nails digging into the cords of cotton thread on his jeans. He dragged his fingers up, over his knee cap, onto his thigh. Sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and ran it under his teeth hard.

The woman pushed a phone up to Cas, poked at something on the screen and leaned in. He smiled, that black leather jacket hugging the curve of his neck like divine intervention.Cas’ hair was wet, flattening against his head, heavy with rain, his shoulders hunched in the cold. He nodded. The two of them bled out under the heavy droplets and the tension in Dean’s chest wrenched up another notch until the wipers took the blur away again. This time, Cas was ducked under the umbrella, curled in beside the girl to look at her phone. He pointed at it and nodded. She was touching his arm. Her fingers cresting just at the edge of his palm, sitting haughty at the meat of his thumb.

Dean shook his head, his palms sweating.

It should have mattered that she was way too young for him. That it wasn’t Cas’ type--that he didn’t really have a type. It should have mattered that her bleached-out dark hair and ripped acid-wash jeans screamed about daddy issues and an inane desire to shirk ties with _gen z_ , but it didn’t. It all seemed like a big deal all the sudden. It all seemed like the end of the world. Cas was going to be converted, and any moment they’d start kissing. Dean would have to watch him rip off her shirt, unbutton her pants--

_Nope._

Dean grabbed his knees, his body half off the seat, practically climbing into the dash. 

He couldn’t do it.

“Dean--”

He looked away just long enough to graze the chrome door pull and slide back out into the cold. The rain bit through him sharp as teeth, but he kicked his flannel out just the same, drawing the .45 from the small of his back. It slipped into his fingers like a missing appendage, weighty and war-worn.

It was the solution. 

The wind kicked the leaves past as his heavy brown boots found their rhythm, cutting through the puddles, playing over the grit and grime settled into the grooves of the street. Reason choked in his throat as the barrel leveled at her head. He played it out, a flash of thought he was powerless to stop, because he knew all the steps from _here_ to _gone_.

Just a quick trigger pull and the gun would pop. The sound would thunder through the lot, ricochet off the room windows, and half the patrons would hit the floor out of habit. No one would call the cops because the only people checking out rooms at the _EZ Night Stop_ were John’s or criminals, and so he’d pull it again. He was a fucking good shot, but even if her head blew like a watermelon the first time, Dean still had to make sure she’d never touch Cas again. Then, he’d probably pull it a third time, because _fuck it, the barrel’s already hot_.

A hungry rat scratched at the back of his brain, and his fingers twisted tighter around the pearl grip. He clenched his jaw and his hand shivered, the world slowed down again and a fleeting moment of clarity told him he was possessed, told him that Sam wasn’t gonna get to him, and he wasn’t going to stop himself.

He choked out Cas’ name, and the sound of it pushed blood to his temples in hot bursts.

Cas glanced up casually, then his eyes stuttered to Dean as all the shards of reality fell into his lap. His face went slack and he rose a hand, ducked the edge of the umbrella and moved to Dean without pause, smooth as cream. 

He was saying something, Dean was sure of it. Because, those pink lips were moving, but the swimming blue of his eyes was all Dean could think about. The way Cas’ undivided attention made him feel. Cas pushed a hand into his chest, and as they collided, the momentum drained out.

Dean stopped, and Cas spoke again, his expression so soft, it wrapped him like a blanket. Dean watched the cold water drip from his hair, down his face, trail from his chin with a movie-quality dramatic roll to match the hum of Dean’s pulse. He watched Cas’ lips part, and felt his eyes pour through Dean’s face as if they were finally looking at each other, a cracked shell of secrets. 

Then, they started moving, backing up, Dean pliable to Cas’ touch. Before he realized it, he was butted against the motel siding, a shiver of cold cutting his spine as Cas’ voice finally broke the errant mumble. 

“No one’s taking me from you.” 

Dean forgot the gun in his hand, the bleach-blonde girl with the pink umbrella. He forgot about Sam and the Impala. The stale ash reek from cigarettes snuffed out in the dirt below him. 

He dropped the .45 and stumbled hands to Cas’ face instead. He whined as desperation found him, and he found Cas’ lips, sliding into him like he needed air, devouring the medley of sensation the cold rain and musty leather beside it brought. Cas’ hesitation before sharing it was no more than bated breath, and he was suddenly digging into Dean, his flat palm curling up in a handful of Dean’s shirt. A grunt rattling from the back of his throat as Dean clipped their hips together, twined into him, and caught the swell of his lip. He could taste the absolute in whatever that sweet thing was on his tongue. 

“God, I want you,” Dean confessed. Begged. Fucking pleaded. “I want you so bad.”

Cas gulped a moan to that, then, just as suddenly, pushed Dean back again, forcing him into the wall. Dean’s fugue cracked. A disintegration of sugar and water, until all he was left with was Cas’ flushed face, and that tingling bite on his own lips. Rain dribbled onto the sidewalk beside them, a cracked gutter overhead bleeding into the grass. The Impala was empty, driver’s side yawned open, his brother stopped dead in the middle of the lot. 

Dean swallowed hard, his eyes swung back again, and he realized he still had hold of Cas’ face. His fingers slowly slipped off, and he watched Cas struggle to pull everything back in. Recap the bottle that had just spilled him.

“Is there, uh, any chance I’m hallucinating right now?” Dean asked, muscling a smile.

Cas’ chest hitched, and although he seemed to be trying his damnedest to sound unphased, his voice cracked anyway. “You’re infected?” 

“That a--uh-- no, then?”

+

  
  


“If you’d just said something--” Cas palmed both hands down his face and moved aside as Sam shoved Dean back into the obnoxious motel room.

“Go sit down,” he barked, and Dean tossed a shoulder, shrugged him off.

“Easy, Thor,” he curdled, but collapsed on the bed obediently anyway. Sunk into his hands. Wished he could just keep sinking. 

_This is the part where I get to disappear,_ he decided. _It has to be._

He was going to be the first person to actually succeed in opening up a hole in the earth just to crawl into. Good riddance to the gold walls and mangy carpet with the dubious stain. Good riddance to the half-working tv and the two beds that would tell horror stories if someone would just flick on a black light. More importantly, good-fucking-riddance to the soul-sucking life embarrassment that was his unfortunate life.

_Better yet, maybe Auntie M’ll wake me up and I’ll get to get the fuck out of Oz._

The door shut, and Dean suddenly felt like he was suffocating. He wasn’t sinking, he was stagnant. Just sitting collecting shame as quick as the room collected dust. 

Cas started again, weak and exasperated. Hands pulling through his hair in a disheveled huff that nearly turned him see-through. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“What do you mean, _why didn’t I tell you_? Why do you think I didn’t tell you?” Dean griped, knee-jerk quick. He watched Cas waffle, bite his cheeks, swallow a thick lump. 

_Jesus Christ. You fucking broke him. Look at him._

Dean had never seen him so out of sorts. Pacing, jerking hands, eyes flying from one wall to the other, just to settle into the carpet again like he was reading the tea leaves at the bottom of a mug.The worst part was, Dean wasn’t sure if he was more compelled to get up and hug him until he calmed down, or lock himself in the bathroom until the end of time to just avoid the whole fucking thing.

“Listen,” he said, jerking fingers through his own hair, flicking the sitting water out of it. “I didn’t think it was gonna be a problem until it was a huge fucking problem!” 

His stomach was so far up his throat it was giving heartburn a run for it’s money, but it was the look on Cas’ face that was turning him inside out. “It was just the spell. I didn’t--I’m not--” He growled. “There’s no control, dude. That’s all I can say.”

“Wait. I don’t unders--”

“\--I don’t know where she went, but she left quick,” Sam cut in, brushing the curtains aside. They’d troubled them so many times now they weren’t even coughing dust anymore. 

Cas glanced over, train of thought lost in the shuffle. “I doubt you have to worry, I think she was a prostitute. There was something strange about her, but--” He caught Dean’s eye and pulled back up, over-corrected. “I mean, just a--uh, tourist. She was just asking directions.”

He was shit at nonchalance. Always had been.

“Yeah,” Dean scoffed. “Sure. A tourist in podunk Oregon asking directions. Did the directions include a date in the back alley, or was she classy enough for a room? She seemed classy.”

It blurted out of him and Sam’s stuffy laugh bolded just how ridiculous he sounded. Dean buried his face in his hands again, groaned. “Do you really need to be here right now?”

“I don’t know, do you need a chaperone?” Sam rebuked.

Heat hit Dean’s face in a wave. He could feel Cas’ eyes on him.“You think this is funny? It ain’t--”

“\--Oh, no. I don’t think it’s funny. I think you can’t be honest for two seconds and someone almost died out there! That was a person, Dean. Pro or not. It’s exactly what we've vowed to protect, and you almost gunned her down in the middle of the street! For asking direc--”

“\--My ass she was ask--”

“Okay, stop!” Cas spat. He threw Sam a glare that could race shivers down a demon. “First of all, Dean shouldn’t get the blame for this, so stop. And second of all, she just wanted directions.” He repeated it, and the sentiment candied in Dean’s chest, compelled him closer. He wanted to get off the bed run his fingers down Cas’ cheeks, feel the grit of his whiskers against his fingertips-- he tore his eyes away instead and looked down, settled into the carpet.

_Jesus,_ reality was slipping through his fingers. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the unsettled shuffle in Cas’ shoulders. The needy ache they bore through him. He expected it to happen again at any moment. Cas would look at him and their eyes would deadlock and he'd be on top of him, trailing fingers over his skin, tempting the bare flesh under his damp shirt, and Dean wanted him to. He was at the edge of begging for it. He wanted to kiss Cas again, feel his soft lips in contrast to that fucking stubble. He wanted to be so close to him that he could fall into that other-worldly blue and drown. 

“It’s at least partially his fault,” Sam said from the door. He shook the rain from his coat, combed his stringy hair back with loose fingers. “He knows it. And he’ll keep knowing it long after Harvey’s burned. Tell me I’m wrong, Dean.”

Dean rubbed his eyes, elbows digging bruises into his thighs. “Go burn the fucking body,” he said.

“That’s what I thought.” Sam popped the door open, slapped a loose hand at Cas’ shoulder, “you’re coming,” then back to Dean, “You’re not. You stay right there. Do not move. Do not breathe. I’ll text you when you’re clear.”

Cas worked the cord at the back of his jaw. That little nervous muscle shuffle that told Dean he had about a million things he wasn’t saying. He worried eyes Dean’s way and nodded, waited for Sam to duck out before pausing at the threshold to look back. 

Dean watched him waver, just over the bleached out stain in the carpet. A vain attempt to erase the years of foot traffic and shoes. 

“Just go, Cas.”

“I don’t want you to be embarrassed,” he said softly.

“That ship’s sailed.”

“I understand, but,” he huffed, and looked like he was tearing apart at the seams. “If I told you it wasn’t your fault, would it help? Would you feel better?” 

Dean peeled his face from his clammy fingers, jaw clenched so tight it ached his temples. He couldn’t quite pinpoint Cas’ expression. It moved restless in foreign territory. Alien now where it usually buzzed for Dean like a neon sign. _Confused? Upset? Conflicted? ...Guilty?_

Dean pulled off the bed and listened to the old springs creak relief. Something itched at him. Another wave of compulsion driving him closer to Cas. “Talk to me,” he said, watching Cas swallow, thick and chunky. The way his eye trailed Dean across the room. 

Cas went for his tie, to brush a hand down it--a nervous tell Dean was just beginning to realize he’d developed--but there was nothing to grab. He planted uneasy fingers at the front of his jacket instead, and staggered his palm down the teeth of his zipper. “There’s an aspect to the spell I didn’t mention before,” he said. “Because, it wasn’t important--I mean, it wasn’t applicable, but it’s become applicable now.”

“Important, how? Total brain-melt important?” 

“No,” Cas cleared his throat, his fingers dancing nervously over the door knob. “Not like that.”

“You wanna break it down for me, then?”

“Some spells work to instill loneliness or neediness in the impaired so they seek to rectify it. Others work in tandem with other people… certain people, and when confronted by those… individuals, it can set the spell off.”

“And which one is this, Cas?”

“The latter.”

“What does that mean? Plain-Jane it.”

A breath tripped through him and his cheeks went red in the low light. “In your case, the reaction is based on the amount of interest… the other person has in you,” he said slowly. His eyes flicked back up and only grazed Dean before retreating again to the floor. “I don’t know why, but that’s supposedly how it works,” he added quickly.

Dean ate hungry through his broad shoulders. He was close enough now that all he could smell--all he wanted to smell--was that savory mix of syrupy leather and rain as it hung around him like a shroud. The timid tango of Cas’ body told Dean everything he needed to know. Cas could take that fucking spell down to studs for him in the most technical way, but he’d already said everything he had to.

_You an’ me._

_Me an’ you._

It felt like time suspended. Like Dean could pause the world and eat this moment as slowly and meticulously as the decadent thing it was. The idea of it bloomed in his gut with a brilliant burst of energy. He held his breath, reached forward, and lightly clicked the door behind Cas shut. Hovering just outside his space, hanging at the edge of his atmosphere. Felt the way Cas so easily let him into it. His gaze dancing from Dean’s eyes, to lips, like the both of them were about to set him on fire. 

“So…” Dean spoke carefully, took his time, let the gravity pull Cas in. “You’re tellin’ me this isn’t my fault, because what you’re saying is… it’s yours?”

Cas’ lip trembled, and Dean wanted so badly to catch it. Suck it into his mouth and bite the doubt away. He needed Cas up against him again. He craved it. Dean just wanted Cas to touch him. Needed to feel his fucking fingers walk down his cock. Whatever gracey, jittery, unsure touch they might elicit. He needed to feel the grate along his fly about as bad as he needed a shot of _Hendrick’s_ every morning with his coffee. 

They’d already kissed, _yeah_ , but Dean had hardly been present for it. Not like he wanted to. And now the heat of Cas was making him hard. The little jump in his chin as he chewed the insides of his cheeks and tried to cherry-pick every fleeting thought. 

“If I’m saying that, does it make you feel better?” he asked again cautiously.

Dean breathed back a flutter, and he fought his hands to stay at his sides. 

The room was lit in bright colors and faded corners. Dean knew--he fucking knew-- it was the spell turning the saturation up, but it didn’t matter. The real world was just cannon fodder to what he had right now. What was at the edge of his body, just outside his fingertips. Because whatever that look was that was eating through Cas’ face, it was filling the canyon-sized hole in Dean’s chest. And that, he suspected, didn’t have anything to do with the spell at all. 

He needed it. He needed it all. 

“Well, maybe you can answer something for me first,” Dean continued, tugging Cas’ collar down, tapping a knuckle at the edge of his chin. “Everyone else I’ve noticed? Flirty. Just skin and elbows, man. But you…” He squinted, bit the need on his lip, and let the thought trail into the silence.

“I’m…?” Cas’ face stumbled soft, tears cropping up at the edge of that airy blue, his shoulders jumping with a scream of tense muscles. He moved into Dean’s hand a moment, then quickly pulled straight. “I--uh… I’m sorry…” 

Dean blinked, frowned. Tried to read him. “You’re sorry? What does that mean you're sorry?” _It’s an accident? You hate it? You don’t mean it? I’m misunderstanding? What?_

It teased the rusted belt in Dean's brain again, poked the hungry rat. That decrepit pang of loneliness was corroding his mind. He felt like soon he'd be nothing but bitterness and rust, and it was all on display for the world. Just a goddamn nesting doll of empty hopes.

Cas held out uneasy hands. “Okay… I want-- but, this isn’t--”

Dean swayed back, and it stung like a ripped band aid. “How ‘bout you quit dancin’ for me and talk,” he snarled. The vitriol in it surprised even him, his impatience coloring the room black.

_Just fucking say it so we can get it out of the way: This is a mistake._

Cas winced and grabbed his stomach. An unnerving human reaction. “Okay, fine,” he stammered. “When you’re not home I go into your room and listen your albums--”

“\--Burying the lede, Cas.”

“Shut up and listen. You want me to talk, I’m talking!” He took a ragged breath. “I listen to your music, and I close my eyes. I try to imagine I’m in the Impala, hunting with you. And, sometimes,” his throat jumped, “I lay on your bed. I think about what it would be like if I got to have a place on it beside you... If you ever let me get close enough.”

Dean’s gut took a dive and his breath caught in all the cobwebs of his chest. It was his turn to grab his stomach, his hand stumbling into a fist full of wet cotton. “What?”

“And, I shouldn’t say anything at all,” Cas said, “but, I’m telling you… angels can’t dream, Dean, but somehow I manage to dream of you. And it kills me to realize you haven’t a clue how much you mean to me.”

“Okay, hang on.” Dean stopped him and drank the sting at the back of his jaw, tried to gather his racing thoughts. 

Not what he expected.

Not at all.

He staggered hands to Cas’ face, pushed him up against the door, leaned into him. He watched Cas’ eyes brush a hot line over his mouth as he moved, felt the heat of his lips as Dean ran both thumbs over them. 

“Wait--” Cas slapped a hand to Dean’s chest just as quick. Stopped him just before they touched. “Don’t.” 

“Why?”

“We can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m weak for you, Dean.” He swallowed a sob, his voice dragging rocksalt from his throat. “I don’t think I could stop myself.” 

“So don’t.”

Cas’ hands curled into Dean’s shirt, and suddenly Dean wasn’t sure if he was holding him back or keeping him there. “I need you to understand, the spell’ll go out with me. When I leave. This hormone-high’ll fade.”

Dean shook his head. “So?”

“And you--you’ll change your mind. Your head will clear and you’ll think about all this. You’ll realize that it isn’t me you want. You just want someone… you deserve someone. But, it’s--it’s not me. I know you will.” He looked up at Dean slowly, carefully, like any moment the floor was going to drop out and his world was going to go sideways. 

“You don’t know that.”

Tears spilled over Cas’ cheeks, painted them bright. A brilliantly naked side of him Dean had never seen. He leaned in again, brushed Cas’ nose, rubbed the tears away with his thumbs.

“You don’t love me, Dean. This is mind control.” The gravity in his voice moved mountains. 

Dean pulled back again, and if it had stung the first time, this time felt like an acid wash. Cas’ conviction drained the colors out. Everything was gray, lamenting with the sickness of that accusation. Bloated and raw. After everything they’d been through, everything they’d done. The idea that Cas could say it with such certainty made it seem absolutely true. Like there wasn’t even a chance he was mistaken. 

_That’s not true. How could that be true?_

Suddenly Dean wasn’t sure how much of what he was feeling was spillover from their actual relationship, and how much of it was just the spell. What the hell had he been hiding--denying-- for years, if it wasn’t love? He felt abusive. Just a loley fuck who’d been dragging Cas around by a leash, and beating him back as he tried to follow. 

“You’re wrong,” he whispered gravely, but there was no confidence in it. Confidence was a rope bridge, and Cas had just shredded the ties. 

_Please be wrong._

Cas squeezed his eyes shut, let Dean’s shirt go to stagger that palm to his zipper again. “I’m so sorry. That’s not--” He chased more tears down his face. “This is not how I meant this to go.”

Dean stepped away, his eyes falling onto that threadbare carpet; as barren and used as his bleeding heart. “No. You’re not-- you’ve…” Dean stopped himself, bit his tongue. “You should probably go,” he said, pulling the words in stiff strands, bringing his hands back to his sour stomach again. He retreated to the bed, collapsed onto it, knees sick. He couldn’t drag his eyes up, couldn’t even bring himself to look even at Cas’ shoes.

_How long you been leading him around? How could you’ve done this to him?_

Cas stood there, barely breathing, eyes wide. “Dean, I’m sorry. When I get back, we can talk? If you decide you don’t want to… I’ll--I’ll go.”

“Yeah,” Dean shrugged. “Sure.” 

Cas slipped away, and with him, whatever veil of composure Dean was peacocking. Tears broke through his face as the Impala pulled from the lot. Dean grabbed his chest, elbows digging into his thighs, body shivering. He gagged, overwhelmed. Ran to the bathroom and barely made it to the mildewed toilet before retching the nothing he’d eaten that day.

Just a stomach full of bile and shame.

  
  
  



	3. Burn Me Up

Part III

“Fucking cupid.”

The ancient florescent lights hummed an ungodly noise into the empty bathroom. Dean heard the neighbors starting up again just on the other side of the paper thin walls. They were shouting, swearing. Pretty soon the headboard would be banging, and the whole room would get that skunky smell of weed. It would seep through the air duct, and he would lean a little too close to the vent and hopes of a contact high.

_Weed or sex, honestly. Either one’ll do._

He rolled his head along the wall, shoulders butted up to the cool sheet rock, and stared at the nasty gray/green mold that was chewing a line through the caulking at the base of the toilet. He pulled his knees in closer and pretended he wasn’t sitting on that disgusting linoleum. Instead, he was back in the bunker. Clean and pristine. His own room. His bed. The toilets he’d just scrubbed shortly before they left for this horror-show of a case. Before Cas had met them, and Dean had completely lost his cool.

_I shoulda stayed home,_ he thought driving the heels of both hands into his eyes. He felt the salty drag of dried tears down his cheeks and rubbed harder.

Acid kicked around his gut again, fondling a gag into the base of his throat, and his eyes skirted the cold toilet belly for reassurance. His stomach showed no signs of settling. It was as worked up as his nerves.

He shook his head and tried to make sense out of everything. Everything Cas had said, everything Dean felt--thought he felt. He kept churning it in his brain and, at this point, he was closer to butter than he was to an answer.

He spread a sweaty palm on the floor and watched as his restless body heat left a steamy aura around his fingertips. He felt wound up. Like he’d been stuffed in a box. Crammed up to an impasse with big walls and steep drop offs everywhere he looked. 

So far, Cas had been right--about everything. He’d explained the spell to a _T_. Including that helpful little tidbit about the way the power would fade out with Cas as he left. Sure enough, the second the Impala’s red tails tucked the corner of Bard and Hamersly, the breathy, muddled haze chirping through Dean’s mind slipped out like grease off a hot spoon. He was left staring at the center of fucking toilet bowl in the light of harsh reality, feeling like someone had just thrown his guts into a blender and hit puree.

The truth was, he was still far from normal. Jumpy and half hard, he was itching to touch someone’s skin, feel their breath, taste their tongue. Only, that pesky emptiness was back again. That tearing burn that made everything feel like a picked scab. 

With the warmth of Cas, gone, there was nothing to dull it. And, the worst part was, he _knew_ that that particular feeling had nothing to do with the spell at all. It had lived in his chest so long, it’d nested there. The words Cas had left him to reflect with were just cementing it into his bones. 

‘ _You don’t love me, Dean.’_

What was he supposed to do with that?

_Fuck you. You don’t know. You have the social perception of a guinea pig,_ he spat, but the thought brought a familiar sting to his eyes.

He did love Cas. He had to. He didn’t care how the spell worked. If that wasn’t love he was feeling for the guy, then Dean didn’t know what love was. And that had a whole slew of tear-worthy implications all on its own. He knew, spell or no, he’d made space for Cas in his chest a long time ago, and, yeah, maybe the cupid-shit had redecorated the rooms a little, but it hadn’t fabricated it all. 

The two of them had history. A lot of it, goddammit. Some of it was even good, if Dean shifted the pretenses around and pretended like what they did on a daily basis was normal. That had to mean something. He wasn’t ready to give that up. It was all he ever wanted. And the closest he’d ever come to it was with Cas. If the spell took that away from him, then he had nothing at all. 

He pulled off the floor and listened to his knees creak, glimpsed himself in the mirror and caught the haggard draw of his eyes. The loneliness was as evident on his face as his sun-licked freckles and weary-born crows feet. He wasn’t sure if it was the spell drawing it out, or just his veneer crumbling. 

_I guess I got nothing,_ he realized.

He was already fucked. It was just a matter of time now. He’d get a text from Sam saying the body was dust, and Dean’s world would fall out in a spectacular shitstorm of avoidance and down turned eyes. 

_The veil’s gonna go up in flames with Harvey’s body and I’ll have nothing left. Just this sick--fucking--hole, self-deprecating shitshow of a personality, and no one. No love to give._

_Cas’ll leave cuz I got nothing for him. And my chances of having a meaningful relationship after that start with an entire fifth of whiskey, and end with ‘the stranger’ in a hot shower when I’m too drunk to find where Sam hid the rest._

This was it. He was staring at it.

Just Dean-o and his fucking reflection. 

_This asshole doesn’t even wanna be here with me._

His jaw jumped again and the back of his throat mulled another wave of salty tears. “Cas’ just wrong,” he muttered to the mold. 

_But, what if he’s not?_

The question ached at him. Tormented him, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. He couldn’t stay there. Couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror anymore.

Couldn’t bare to face the fallout.

He stumbled cold fingers to the knob.

_Maybe he’s right. Maybe you don’t love him--that way. Not like he wants you to. Not like he apparently loves you. And--FUCK--maybe that’s just because you’re too fucked up to spot ‘happy’ if it slapped you in the face with both thighs, but you know--you fucking know-- you love him enough that you can’t keep doing this. Hurting him. Dragging him through the shit behind you. Using him…_

There wasn’t a thing in the world that could convince Dean that wasn’t true. His reflection confirmed it. The way the color drained out and his stomach heaved. He dragged both hands back through his hair, pulled at it, desperate and wrecked. 

_Just leave. Just fucking go. He’ll get the picture. He’ll understand._

_It’s already over. Save him the fallout._

Dean sobbed, and he’d have broken the mirror for showing it to him if he could’ve just mustered the energy. His mind ached for Cas, and he needed to drown it. _God-fucking-dammit,_ he needed to suffocate it. Bury it. Salt and burn it.

_Run, boy. Run._

  
  


+

  
  


“What’re we drinking?”

Dean blinked back a drop of water as it kicked off his hair, dribbled down his face. He slipped onto the bar stool and pulled his wallet, thumbed through, found a couple $50s and tossed them onto the counter. “Whiskey,” he said. “Leave the bottle.”

The bartender looked back at him, short-cropped dark hair, longer on the top than it was on the sides, and a little bow tie. _Crooked._

“All right, but keep it kosher, cuz I’m not cleaning you off the floor at the end of the night,”he said, dimples kissing delightful bookends at the edges of his lips, a scar left now where a lip ring used to be.

Dean scoffed. “Buddy, if it only took one.” 

He watched as the bartender stooped below the counter, opened the back stock and plopped a brand new bottle of Johnny Walker down. His carefully buttoned cuff slipped up his wrist and teased a glimpse of ink just under the edge of it.

_Asian-inspired._

Dean suddenly pictured him straightening out, undoing the buttons at his neckline, the bowtie unravelling into fat, ribbony tails, as he jerked the fabric out from under it.

_Fuck my life. Here we go…_

He tore the shirt off and showed Dean the way the tattoos trailed all the way up his arm, down over one pec, decorating the whole of it in tight-knit, intricate designs. Spirals and stripes, repetitive curved arches of the koi scales and serpent skin. Artistic embellishments to the sharp cut of muscle along his thin frame.

He was young still--younger than Dean, at least. The warm barlight played through the stained-glass lampshades and turned to velvet against his face. And, as he smiled at Dean again, his eyes caught in perfect echo with the caramelized whiskey-brown in the bottle, they turned into deep, dragging pools of lamplight. 

There seemed to be nowhere far enough for Dean to run. Everything was just going to keep repeating, playing back like an endless loop. A compelled ache followed by meaningless flirting. Groundless, meaningless advances as the spell struggled to pair him off with some poor bastard, and lead him back to that heaven-crafted corral. Saddle him with a pair of decommissioned angel wings and a lifetime of endless whispering from the God-squad.

It was strange though. It seemed like if the goal of the spell was to recreate a mutant race of warriors, the spell would only work between men and women.

_Maybe I’m just way gayer than I thought,_ he shifted on the barstool, pinching the skin between his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. He blinked and suddenly the bartender was dressed again, flipping a shined glass tumbler down from the rack and sliding it over the polished wood. “This one’s my favorite,” he said, cracking the top, tipping it into the glass, letting the silky liquid play like butterscotch starlight to the dim corners. “It’ll warm you right up.”

Dean fingered it, toyed with the rim a moment before taking a swig. He’d had it before. More times than he cared to tally, but he kept eyes on the bartender anyway. Grit through the after bite and smiled. “Good,” he said quietly, and he could pretend it was for another reason--any other reason, but really, it was because he wanted the attention. He needed it. 

Anything and everything to pull his mind away from his mess of a life.

“I also make a mean dirty martini.”

“Those go better with a suit,” Dean mumbled into his cup.

The bartender shrugged, cocked a brow, and rubbed down another glass with his little terrycloth towel. The slide of his fingers down the sides of it pet a shiver through Dean, and he didn’t look away when the hallucinations tempted his eyes down toward the little flick of the bartender's wrist as he undid his belt, left it hanging open. A fingertip lightly caressing the button on the front of his black dress pants, then trailing a line down the fold of his zipper. It called to Dean and he wanted to touch him. Wanted to feel the button as it popped open, the jump of the zipper as he pulled it.

He swallowed again, and it got caught somewhere in his throat, choked up on the sides of reason and backed up against the shit he came to bury. “I bet you go pretty good with a suit too,” he said quietly, and it felt wrong. Dirty and wrung out. Desperate and needy. But so goddamn necessary. 

_What the fuck is the matter with you? Shut up, drink your goddamn whiskey, and stop being such an idiot. For once. For-fucking-once!_

He glanced back up and was surprised to see an interested tilt in the bartender’s body. He wasn’t backing away, his gaze stable and curious. That was how the spell worked, wasn’t it? The reason Dean was seeing anything at all was because the guy was already interested. It was just a coincidence he looked a little like Cas. 

_Okay, a lot like Cas._

He tentatively slid the bottle over, met eyes slow and careful. “Have a drink with me,” he said ignoring the voice in his own head, the one that told him he strolling up to another huge mistake and leaning into the sights. It was easy to ignore it. Dean was great at ignoring it.He just needed some soul junk food, and he could rationalize anything to get it. Because, the truth was, this was it. As fucked up as it was, this was the closest Dean was going to get to Cas while he still felt this way. While there was still a fucking hole sitting there with an angel halo topping it, he was sure of it. And he just needed one more taste.

The bartender stood quietly, hung up the glass. “I’m on the clock,” he said, simple enough.

Dean looked around. At the empty tables and seats. There were only a couple people tucked in the back, so far away their voices registered as background noise. “I ain’t gonna tattle.” 

“You haven’t even asked my name.”

_Because I don’t care._

Dean shrugged. “You haven’t asked for mine either.”

The bartender squinted and leaned over, flirted another peek of tattoo at his wrist and smiled. “What’s your name?” he asked bucking a chin.

“Dean.”

“Dean? Emery.”

Dean smiled, and it almost felt okay. “Emery, have a drink,” he said catching his bottom lip between his teeth and biting the reservations away. He pushed the bottle further, with a couple loose fingers. “My treat.” 

+

It was when the spell went out that it finally hit him. It’d been playing around his brain before that, but he hadn’t really nailed a pin into the realization until that dull haze drained out and let him breathe again. Until his stupid goddamn cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he remembered the spell--Sam-- _Cas_.

He wanted him.

He _still_ wanted him.

The hollow ache hit his gut like a sledgehammer, and nearly knocked his knees out.

This was not Cas.

Dean jerked back, knocked a broom over, listened to it slap into the floor, and Emery, _the poor bastard_ , didn’t even notice. He was hands and knees and mouth, and Dean was tangled up between them, hard as a rock and just about ready to come.

“Jesus Christ---stop,” he blurted stumbling backwards and catching a hanging hook on the wall right between the shoulder blades. He smothered the pool of heat running his spine, and pushed Emery away.

“What’s wrong?” Emery looked up, red mouth, wide eyes, and Dean brushed both clammy hands down his own face. Looked away.

“I can’t.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“I can’t do this,” Dean repeated, scrambling his pants up. He tripped over the broom, pulled down his shirt.

“I don’t get it. Is it something I did? You were just fine!” Emery pleaded, followed, grabbed Dean’s arm, but Dean brushed him off, rushed through the backroom doors. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“You’re a dick.”

_Yeah. I know it._

+

He hit the exit at full speed, dismissed Sam’s text as he got his phone out, and plucked Cas’ name from his contacts list as he brushed back out into the cold. He trotted down the sidewalk, and through the pools of bleeding lamplight. Followed the nested puddles of rain along the curb. The standing water danced and waved like a mirage of yellow brick as they echoed the warm sodium streetlight back to him.

The rain had let up at least, though the wind was creeping in again. It took his jean jacket by the bottom, and puffed it out around his hips, filling it with chill. His back was a sweaty mess from the bar. Nerves, hormones, just, all of it… He needed a fucking shower.

_I need a fucking shower with Cas, is what I need. A good ole ‘two birds, one stone’ kinda fix._

Against his chest, a muffled voice suddenly broke the slosh of his wet footsteps, and he jerked the phone back up in time to catch the best part.

“\--box of ‘ _Castiel’_ Please leave a message after the tone.” The way Cas grumbled his name into the receiver managed to pull a smile from the darkest corner of Dean.

It was a happy moment caught suspended in time.

  
  


“Just say your name,” Dean had said shoving the phone in Cas’ face.

“I know how to record a voicemail, Dean. I’ve done it many times.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t done it since you got the new phone, and I’m sick of listening to Robot Lady Hildy recite your entire number to me before I can leave a message.”

Cas had rolled his eyes, grabbed it, waited for the beep. “Castiel,” he’d said carefully, then stopped when Dean shook his head. “What?”

“Always _Castiel_ , why not just say Cas?”

His shoulders caught hard on a shrug of absurdity. “Seems too informal,” he said with a scoff.

“Sam and I are literally the only two people who call you. Where’s the formality, dude?”

Cas had seriously considered it. Really taken his time, mulling over that sentiment as if, for him, it’d been previously set in stone. He finally pursed the reluctance from his lips and pressed record again. 

_You’ve reached the voicemail box of--_ “ Cas,” he’d said this time, and it came out stubby and unnatural. 

Dean grimaced, tried, but couldn’t hide it.

“What now?”

“Nothing. You just...” A smile strung through Dean’s face and he tried to bite it away. “You just sound like you’re pickin’ a hair outta your mouth now.”

Cas frowned, his face pinching as he hit delete with all the prickled obstinacy of someone personally offended. He waited for the voicemail cue one last time, and as it beeped, he grumbled his full name again. It came out drenched in salt and about as bitter, that leveled glare plucking Dean’s gut like a guitar string. 

Dean remembered smiling through it, watching it all and grinning like an idiot while Cas glowered. But, mostly, he remembered the way Cas’ face had cracked at the end, the superficial grudge crumbling. The way the edges of his mouth twitched up and lit warmth in his eyes, the air around them settling into something so quiet and comfortable.

It hadn’t been the first time one of Cas’ wild hairs had reminded Dean there was something buried there between them, but it might have been the first time they’d both acknowledged it together, even if only for that moment. 

And now Dean felt absolutely thick with it. The potential, the opportunity. If he could just fucking figure out where to start.

_So, here’s the thing, you were wrong…_

He splashed through another puddle, watched it swell up over the toe of his boot and bead off. He poked Cas’ name again, the screen going dark as it loaded a theater-lit picture of a white pigeon: the ridiculous, but carefully chosen profile image Dean had picked.

_Because it looks like him,_ he thought again for damn near the hundredth time. _It’s all starey and ruffled._

  
  


A sharp jab to Dean’s temple suddenly knocked stars in his eyes, and the somber street went up like fucking Christmas. His knees buckled and he stumbled to the side. Another hard jab to his stomach took his feet out from under him, and his head cracked against the asphalt, narrowly missed the curb. He stuttered blind palms up as his thoughts turned to crumbled chalk for a good too many moments before the world chugged started again. 

By then, it was too late, his hands were road-rashed and bloody, and there was a heavy knee leveraged against his chest. He grunted and gripped fistfuls of shirt, before the sharp end of a blade bit the side of his neck. “Don’t,” a woman said, low and mealy. 

Dean swallowed hard, stilled, tried to blink back the heavy stupor. He couldn’t see her face. It was eaten by shadow. Swallowed by the mask of overhead light and moonless sky. But even without it, that bleach blonde hair screamed back to him like a goddamn fingerprint. 

_Pink Umbrella._

He wheezed against her knee, felt his sternum whisper a quick warning. _Hey, buddy. Remember all those ribs we’ve broken? Yeah, this is gonna extra suck if you don’t get her off._

“Is this about earlier?” he asked, trying his best to fish out a cocky smile. His temple throbbed, it felt hot and thorny where she’d struck him. Beside him, her umbrella rocked to a stop, the handle of it just a little bent. “Did you hit me with _that_? That’s cold.”

His words came out just a clip slower than normal. A little more slurred. He wasn’t totally sure he was making sense, but he was talking anyway. _When in doubt, run your mouth._

“I knew I’d find you eventually.”

“Diligence pays off,” he agreed. “Probably woulda been faster if you just hit all the local bars though. A little insider info for next time.” 

“Why are you so hard to track?”

“I like to play hard to get.” He glanced down as the hilt of an angel blade caught the light.“That’s a little too much hardware for a Pro, so I’m gonna take a wild stab here--no pun intended, FYI--and guess that you’re the Gangster of Love we’ve been cleaning up after the last couple days.” 

She crouched lower and her face pulled from the wrap of shadows. Her expression was surprisingly soft, her lips a bright blush in the cold air. She scoured the street, up one end and down the other, her eyes catching uneasy on every sitting puddle. “You’re alone?”

“Well, I mean, I ain’t looking for a date, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No,” she smiled, and her flash of white teeth rotted something in his stomach. “I can’t imagine you are.”

_I don’t have time for this,_ he realized. Cas and Sam would be wrapping up, and they’d head back to the motel. Dean would be gone, and Cas would get the wrong idea. The air settled stiff. “What do you want?” he asked turning serious. 

“Answers.”

“Answers to what?”

She shook her head, her chest hitching quick as she tried to drain the satisfaction from her face. “Do you know how lucky I am that you’re here? That it’s _you_? The infamous Dean Winchester?”

“Yeah, I don’t get that a lot. I’m kinda getting mixed signals here. You wanna let me up and we can make nice?”

She leaned heavier into his chest and he groaned, wrapped both hands around her knee, and she pushed back with the blade. “Man isn’t supposed to fall in love with Heaven’s host, Mr. Winchester. Did you know that? It’s actually a bastardization of the grand design.”

“What does that have to do with me?” he wheezed, and she laughed, her head dodging back, her throat jumping in the shadow.

“ That’s adorable. You’re adorable,” she said. “See, now? In the rare event it happens, and it does happen--obviously, it really means something. I mean, it  _ really--really  _ means something. It’s proof that there’s life without fate. Proof of free will. An actual glimpse of something bigger than divinity.”

“This have a point, or are you just monologuing?”

She looked away, and seemed like she was lost. Dean stole the opportunity to survey the street. His phone was gone, lost in the shadow somewhere. Knowing his luck, in the middle of one of those puddles, soaking straight through the battery. The roads were empty. No people or cars for most of the evening. 

“Can you understand what that would mean to an angel?” she asked sincerely, her brow tucking into a sweet crease. “It would mean you were special… that you were capable of wielding this insane thing called freedom. It would mean that you finally broke the code that separates us.”

“I don’t get it. What’s this have to do with the little Nephilim side project you’re running?”

She shook her head again, her movements so delicate, they were almost lost against the black backdrop. “There’s no side project. There’s only Gordon.”

“Gordon?” Dean squinted as his brain struggled like rusty train cars to follow along. “Dead-guy Gordon?”

“I loved him,” she said breathlessly. Her hand jumped, her fingers tight, and the blade bit into his neck again. “But, I couldn’t crack the code. I thought I’d gotten it right. I thought this time, this version would do it.”

“All right, _Days of Our Lives_.” Dean squeezed his eyes shut, tried to breath back the throb at his temples. Will his blood pressure down a level. “You either gotta start making sense, or rewind time and not hit me in the head if you’re gonna talk in circles. What’s this have to do with me?”

“Everything. You’re the answer.”

Dean’s mouth ran dry as her gaze settled ravenous on top of him. “Answer to what?” he asked carefully.

“How a man can fall so desperately in love with an angel.”

He tried to laugh, shake his head, but grit his scalp against the asphalt instead. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d cracked it. It felt goose-egged and raw. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” he lied.

She smiled, and it sent shivers through him. Even over his rain-sodden jacket and damp skin, it was that smile that drove the cold into his bones. “You can play coy with me all you want,” she said, “but I’ve seen it. Outside? The way you responded so effortlessly to his touch, his words,” she touched her chest, looked up at the streetlight. “It was beautiful.”

_Dramatic bitch…_ “What the hell were you doing at the motel anyway?” he croaked.

“I’d heard the rumors about him. Heaven talks, you know? They have more to say about the rogue angel Castiel than you might think. I discovered you’d been infected, so I went to watch his heart break, as mine had. I needed to watch someone else’s world fall apart so I wasn’t alone.”

“Man, you’re a real upbeat gal, aren’t you?”

“Ironically, I found _it_ , instead,” she said leaning into him. “The proverbial gem. That once-in-a-lifetime link between worlds. My answer. Now I can crack the code. I can revamp the spell and fix everything. I can show Gordon who I really am.”

“Okay, I think you missed the part where Gordon’s dead,” Dean grunted. “And what? You gonna open some _Ben & Jerry’s_, put on some _Sleepless in Seattle_ and we can have a little cry sesh? I’ll somehow spill all the secrets to successful inter-species love you seem to think I have?” He tried to pick up on her knee again and she reminded him not to touch her with the edge of her blade. He felt blood cry out from the edge, roll down his neck and soak into his neckline. 

“I deal in hearts, Mr. Winchester. I can read them like scrolls--”

“\--From inside my ribcage, I’m sure,” he quipped, swallowing the rising panic. He kept grasping straws to distract her, buying more time til he could work something out. Her blade flirted with the hollow of his throat like an available hooker. It wanted it, and it was going to get it if he didn’t work something out fast. The dance was just for show. He knew it, and she knew it. “And you’re what?” he asked. “Gonna try an bring him back? Fashion yourself a little ash-man and get hitched?”

She squinted, huffed. “You’ve been resurrected.”

“Well, yeah, but Cas is a heavyweight compared to you, and I wasn’t burned. You try an do it, poor ol’ Harvey’s gonna still be coughing dust and carrying his guts in those little plastic tubs. He was burned, you know? Incinerated.”

She cocked her head, those dark eyes falling suddenly down to his chest. “And, I’m an angel,” she said simply. “No one is truly dead to me, so I don’t think you’re cute.”

“Really? Cuz you said I was adorable earlier. Why don’t you just,” he squirmed his shoulder blades against the road, winced, and tried to sneak a hand under his coat, his ribs screaming as he picked his hips off the ground. He felt the cold imprint of his own angel blade in the small of his back. It was pressed tight between him and the street. “Why don’t you just find a new guy? Lots of fish in the sea, and all that. You know? Try a nice stiff drink and some burgers first before you pull out the vial of _Love Potion Number Nine_ and roofie a guy?” 

“I didn’t _roofie_ him,” she sneered. “He had all the power, and he spoiled it. He lied to me and nearly wasted it on someone else. He asked for it! He wanted it, but--”

“Yeah, I got news for you,” Dean scoffed. “When someone ain’t in control of their actions, that’s not having power. You sit there an’ act all righteous, like you bastards always do, but the truth is, cupid are just rapists with good PR.” 

“What part of being in control of your own destiny is raping you?”

“How is this shit _having control_? Who the fuck you talking to here? I lived it!”

“The spell doesn’t force you into anything,” she said, dripping. “It works the same as any other love spell. It pulls solely on your personal wants and desires! The only thing it does to you is tamp down your ape-brain behavioral fears and hesitancies! If you had no control--if--if I’d had control, then I wouldn’t have had to kill him, would I?--”

“\--wait--” Dean’s mouth ran dry, his fingers stumbling to a clammy stop under his body.

“\--I would be sitting with him right now, instead of with you! We’d be matched. We’d be together forever, like I wanted! Like he told me he wanted! And, I wouldn’t have to carve your insipid heart out and thread through the veins looking for a key!”

He froze, his ribs catching the trill of his thoughts in rolling screams.

_Cas lied._

_He fucking lied._

‘ _There are two types of love spells…’_

‘ _This is my fault, I’m sorry…’_

‘ _You don’t love me, Dean…’_

Hot tears swelled in the corners of his eyes and fell, trailed lines over his temples. He suddenly felt lit. His face was on fire, his hands and feet were plastic-stub numb. The panic rose in his chest and he felt like he was quickly losing hold of something he’d just barely gotten between his fingers. His heart whined in his ears, supersonic speeds. 

There wasn’t even enough time to get on the rug before it kept ripping out from under him. 

_Why would he lie?_

That little voice at the back of Dean’s mind jumped in: The one that told him everything was shitty, getting shittier by the day. And, it was easy to believe it, because everything usually was. _Because he doesn’t want you, and he doesn’t know how to let you down._

_But, then, why’d he tell me he dreamed of more?_

He waited, but the voice was quiet. Fucking speechless after a lifetime of constant chatter. Because that was the only important question to ask. It didn’t matter if Cas lied, or if he didn’t. It was superfluous. Too much shit had gone down, and there was too much for Dean to lose if he bowed out and let it all fester. He loved Cas, and he fucking knew he loved him. Maybe Cas had lied about some of it, but it wasn’t an exact science, and Dean knew the guy well enough to get that that confession he’d given hadn’t been one of em. 

_That’d_ been the damn truth. Dean could feel it radiate from every tentative shuffle of Cas’ shoulders, every unsure flick of his eyes. 

And that goddamn kiss. 

_Lips don’t lie when you’re using ‘em like that._

He swallowed a sob, took a hard look at the woman still perched on his chest. Her face was about as flushed as he imagined his was. Her cheeks a screaming pink as the wind picked up and tossed some loose strands of hair around her crown. 

She was the reason for all of it. She’d overridden his agency and thrown him and Cas into a fiery tailspin. Now Dean couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. How he’d gotten there, and where the goddamn pull string was to get off the ride. Here he was, the spell gone, and he was still spinning.

His fingers were stalled out at the edge of his blade. He couldn’t get to it. He was too heavy against the street, his hand robbed of dexterity as the cold settled in. The last thing he needed was to ham-fist the angel blade from his belt and throw the whole game, catch a _high and tight_ through the jugular instead.

“So what’s the plan now, Annabelle?” he asked, stringing the pieces of the case together. “You Frankenstein another round of the spell and find a new monster to use it on? Second time’s the charm?”

She bit her lip as she was watched the blood seep from his neck. Her eyes swallowed the streetlight they were so dark, and Dean could see the two of them had come to the end of their conversation. “Maybe I use it on you.”

He took a chance, fisted the umbrella next to him and clocked her hard, watched it connect at her temple and force her sideways. Her knee came off his chest, and his lungs screamed for air, his ribs creaking regret. The blade at his throat took a clean cut from him as he flexed to jab the spire into her side, and he watched the blood paint her scarlet. He rolled out and fumbled his angel blade, like he knew he would, so he bought time. Crawled over top of her. Held her down.

Her eyes were wild as she wrestled him back, wider still when he managed to get the blade to her chest. “I’ll give you a full dose of the love spell,” she gasped, and Dean realized her palm was on his wrist. 

_Her bow._

“Then you won’t have a body to burn to get you right again!”

“And what happens when the cupid who made it goes bye-bye?” Dean groped, calling her bluff.

She searched him, the tendons in her neck catching the low yellow light as they flexed around her throat. She blinked as blood platted from him in fat drops. He swallowed, tested the waters. Chanced a gentle dab at the gash.

_Awesome. Well, I’m breathin’, at least._

“He’s fading,” she said quickly.

_Nope. We’re done._ Dean sneered and bore his weight into the handle, watched it dip into her chest and poke a red bloom into the front of her shirt. Her eyes flickered with heavenly static.

“Castiel,” she grunted. “He’s fading!”

“I’m done listening to your bullshit, you smarmy bitch.”

“You want to know why he didn’t recognize me earlier? Why he didn’t know I was the cupid?”

“I did--then I realized I don’t fucking care.” 

“It’s because he’s been cut off from heaven for good,” she shrilled. “No more power.” 

“Cas doesn’t need you assholes to charge his batteries. He does just fine without you.”

“He’ll die.”

Dean’s stomach jumped. He eased up and watched the blade tip edge back out, the whites of her eyes sparking again. 

“He’ll fade and die,” she gasped again.

He looked at her, considered her wide face, and creeping tears. “You’re full of shit,” he said, but she’d piqued his attention.

“Maybe you’ve noticed? Maybe he’s slower than he was, maybe he looks a little more tired.” 

The last couple days suddenly came down on him hard. Every innocuous comment Cas had made, every strangely human thing he’d done that’d caught Dean’s attention. 

_The fucking Cheetos._

“Ask him, he knows it,” she urged. Shook her head, her eyes faltering with sincerity. “It’s already started. His wings are wrecked. If you could only see them…they’re mutilated.”

He grit his teeth, his throat raising raw as he tried to swallow the nothing that felt like a mouthful of bees. “I suppose you’re gonna tell me how to stop it if I let you live,” he said barely breaching the wind. She eyed him, those bright lips pulling back in another unnerving smile.

“He’ll never tell you. And you won’t find another angel who will.”

+

_Fuck._

The Harley was missing. 

The Impala now sat all on her lonesome in the first row, nearly all the cars gone as the weekend rush came to a close. The motel perched at the edge of the highway, scratching the cockroaches from its skin and waiting for the next round.

Dean stopped in the middle of the lot, lost for a couple beats as he stared at the brashly vacant spot. His brain was stirred. Everything was running half speed instead of real time. Hot blood still rolling down his neck every time he moved, looked around, walked for too long. He felt another round of it sweep his throat and soak into his neckline. His knees went weak, and he fought the urge to just sit down and give up altogether. He palmed his face, and felt the blood grit his cheek. The street swayed as another throb at his temple reminded him he’d just been the puck in a losing game of street hockey. 

_It’s fine,_ he rationalized. _Maybe Sam took the bike for a spin._ _Maybe Cas’ just inside waiting._

He sighed, felt his ribs bite back when his chest moved too quick, then he hit the motel door and fumbled the knob. Left a smear of blood on the rusted brass as he shouldered his way in.

A wave of sputtery, dry vent heat swept and nearly melting him on contact. Sam jumped in his slatted kitchen chair, knocked a knee into a table leg and had to catch his drink as it teased gravity. A glare petered out of his face as his eyes came off the table, and he coughed through a mouthful of fries. “What the hell happened to you?”

_Not Cas._ Dean blinked slow, his stomach growling at Sam’s empty burger wrapper. “Trouble in Cabo,” he mumbled. 

Sam bumbled up, shoved a handful of napkins against Dean’s neck and grimaced. _That_ face told Dean the cut was a pretty good one. The blood rolling into his shirt should’ve said as much, but it was easy enough to ignore when there was no one else pointing it out. The years had taught him what _massive blood loss_ felt like compared to: _that’s a problem for future Dean_ , and Sam’s medic face said it was somewhere between the two.

“I tried calling you a dozen times. Where’ve you been?” he asked, softer this time, turning the napkins around as they soaked through, worry saturating his face just the same. 

Dean licked his lips, tilting unsteady on his feet. _Well, you shouldn’t’ve left me alone, cuz all I do is fuck everything up and chase people away…_ “Bar fight,” he said instead, looking through the room. 

No Cas. No bags. Not even a sign of him. His gut was stone, his nerves twice fried, and he didn’t want an answer, but he had to have one.“Where is he?”

Sam wobbled to confirm it, the tabletop suddenly more interesting than the bleeding neck with a clot of grease-splashed napkins. His brow folded in that same fucking way it always did for victim’s families, when he was telling them he was sorry. When he was telling them that he understood the hurt. “He left, Dean.” 

And, even though Dean was expecting it, it still ripped through him like a serrated knife. He took a breath, let it settle and burn in his chest as he closed his eyes. “Home or what?” he asked quietly.

“Huh?”

“ Was he going home, or was he just going?”  _ Leaving? Smoking out? Disappearing into the ether. Any of it… all of it? _

“The bunker, I think.”

Dean’s eyes popped open again. “Home?” and Sam frowned, looked around, and nodded. 

“Kansas,” he said, as if that was the part Dean needed clarified.

Suddenly, he could breathe again. The Ziploc baggy just ripped, and fresh air was available again. _Oh, God. Okay._ He tried to wipe the smile that that took his face. _He’s not running, he’s just stalling._

He was only buying time, waiting for everything to settle down. Maybe hoping the fucking embers would work themselves out to ash before anything got burned, but probably just _trying to deal_. In any case, _in every case_ , that meant there was still a chance. He just had to talk to him. Sit down with him. Look him in the face.

_Fucking hell, I’ll take the razor blade floor as long as I got something to dance on._

“How long ago?” he asked suddenly straightening out, eyes jumping to his duffel.

“You just missed him.”

“How long did he stick around?”

“Awhile…”

_Okay, so he was hoping. He was really fucking hoping we’d talk._

Dean rushed to his bed, pulled the bag from the bottom and pawed through his clothes as Sam stood in the middle of the room, bloody napkins in one hand. “What are you doing?”

“Call him,” Dean said, plucking a clean black t-shirt and flannel, slipping his coat off, tossing it, and dodging into the bathroom to glance himself in the mirror. 

_Shit. Blood, blood, everywhere. No wonder Sam’s eyes saucered._

He threw on the water, shoved a towel under the jet stream, and dabbed at the gash. 

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have my phone, obviously, or you’d’ve heard from me a long fucking time ago,” he said slowly. “Will you try? Please?”

Sam pursed his lips, dug his phone out as he watched him. “You need stitches,” he said.

“I need Cas,” Dean corrected slipping his old shirt off, balling it up and tossing it into the tub after his coat.

_I should probably shower… Do I have enough time to shower? I should probably make enough time to shower,_ he thought restlessly, thinking again of Emery and the stained glass bar.

“He’s probably just driving,” Sam said tentatively.

“All right.” Dean stopped, bobbed back out of the bathroom. “What’d he say to you?”

“Huh? Nothing,” Sam veered, paced to the kitchen table and pulled the first aid kit. “Just, lemme get the floss and I’ll stitch you up, you can tell me what actually happened, and I’m sure Cas’ll call you when he stops for gas, or whatever.” 

“Sam. I’ve had a shitty fucking day. You get me? I ain’t in the mood. So spill.”

“He’s giving you space. That’s all. He just doesn’t want to lose you as a friend. Just give it some time before you go postal, or whatever. That’s all I’m saying. He’s a--he’s a sensitive guy, for an angel. Well, for anyone. I guess. I don’t know. When it comes to you, he’s a sensitive guy.”

“Sam,” Dean rubbed a hand nervously at his eyes, squeezed the blood-tinged towel. “I’m--” he sighed. “I ain’t pissed at him for what happened,”  _ for one, because it ain’t his fault... _

The room felt like it’d been paused. Like everything was laying in wait for just exactly what he didn’t want to say. _Cue the fucking spotlight,_ he thought wringing the towel. 

“I love him.” 

It muttered thick from the back of his throat and finished with another hot wave through his cheeks. He watched Sam’s face go soft as he gripped the first aid kit and suddenly hug it to his body, a stupid smile crashing through his cheeks. “Awwe!”

“Oh, what?” Dean scoffed. “You already knew.”

“Well, yeah,” he gloated, “but I never thought you’d actually admit it. It was suppose to be your dramatic deathbed regret.”

“Would you just shut up and call him before I drop this whole fucking mess outta spite?”

Sam shoved the phone to his ear, tossed the kit on the table and popped it open. He waited, bit his lip, shrugged. “I told you he’s just drivin--” 

He cut off suddenly and straightened, eyes wide. “Hey, Cas. It’s, uh, it’s just me… Sam. Hey--”

“Just find out where he’s at,” Dean whispered, dodging back into the bathroom. He frowned at himself in the mirror, looked at the towel, tossed it to the floor and threw on the shower head instead.

“Hey, where are you right now?” Sam echoed from the front room. He fisted some gauze, glanced back at Dean, and then grabbed the roll. “Uh, okay. Substation on Harney, got it--” 

Dean ducked his head into the cold shower stream and watched the bottom of the tub go pink. The back of his head suddenly screamed where the skin was split. He squeezed his eyes shut, bit back a couple choice words.

“Tell him to hang out,” he sputtered through the water, his voice hanging thin around the sting.

“Just, uh, wait there would you?” Sam stumbled. “We’ll meet you--we’ve gotta meet you. Case stuff. Huh? Yeah, no, he’s here. He’s okay. Well, he’s kinda blee--”

“\--Sam!” Dean shook his head. “Just talk about cupid or something!” He glanced Sam’s way through the open door, and when his brother wasn’t looking, he shoved a rag in his pants and scrubbed. _Bye Bye, Emery from the bar. Sorry, dude._ Then, he threw the rag down at the bottom of the tub with the rest of his pile and pulled back out of the rusty jet stream. 

The room jolted again, and he narrowly missed a fall. His boots grabbed the linoleum as he slapped the towel rack. 

“Okay, don’t kill yourself,” Sam berated pulling the phone away.

“Who dies in the bathroom?”

“Elvis… MJ… you--a couple times.”

“I’m practically a rock star.”

Sam suddenly jerked the phone to his ear again. “No, actually. He doesn’t have it.”

“What?”

“Said he’s tried to call you a few times.”

_Jesus._ “Gimme the phone.”

“I don’t know why I’m talking for you anyway,” Sam muttered, gladly passing it.

“Cas?”

“Are you all right?” Cas’ gravel hum licked a shiver through Dean and he suddenly felt like everything was going to be okay. “Sam said you were okay, but he wasn’t very convincing, if I’m being honest. Are you hurt?”

“Why’d you leave?” He gripped the lifeline a little bit tighter. Held his breath, listened to Cas stutter on the other end.

“Because you weren’t there.”

_Right. Because that’s apparently what we agreed._ He glanced up and saw Sam’s eyes on him. “I ran into some trouble,” he said turning his back.

“In the motel room?”

Dean’s stomach sank. There really wasn’t any way to skirt around it. He’d left. He’d done exactly what Cas had predicted, thought about the whole fucked up situation, and bolted. It didn’t matter the reasons. He should’ve just stayed put. He should’ve just listened to his fucking conscience for once in his life and hugged the bathroom floor until Sam pulled stop on the Tilt-a-Whirl, but he hadn’t. And he knew damn well what that looked like. “A guy’s gotta eat,” he said quietly, but he knew Cas wasn’t gonna buy it even before it ever came out of his mouth.

“Dean,” he said, and his voice was settled and rough again. “I only wanted to make sure you were all right.” He huffed another fat pause and wind ruffled into the receiver. “Listen, I understand--”

“No--no, Cas--”

“\--and there are no hard feelings. This has all… certainly worked out for the best, I know--”

“\--Hang on--”

Sam suddenly snatched the phone back, shoved a handful of gauze up to Dean’s neck and he yelped. His chest had gone red again, the blood draining with the water from his hair and slicking down the front of him like drool from a cinnamon sucker.

“Wait, Dean! Stop,” Sam yelled melodramatically, and not all authentic. He popped the phone back up to his ear and sighed, “hey, Cas, it’s me. Hey, listen, Dean just ran out. He’s already in the Impala pulling out. I lied to you earlier, he didn’t want you to know--”

Dean lunged for the phone again--

“Sam!” 

\--didn’t get very far as Sam held him off with a stiff hand to his neck.

“\--but he’s bleedin’ pretty bad, and he wouldn’t let me stitch him up. You gotta meet him, okay? I know-- but, you gotta meet him. I’m worried. He’ll probably be there in ten.”

He clicked the phone off and shoved it back in his pocket. “You’re welcome,” he said, face set. He grabbed the medical tape, ripped a piece off and slapped it to the gauze. “Now, don’t fuck it up.” 

  
  
  



	4. Ashes and Embers

Part IV

  
  


_Apparently Sam’s got a tap straight into some girl level tactics,_ Dean thought, squinting through the darkness as the transistor antennas groped the night sky. _Makes sense. He’s already got the hair._

He pulled onto the shoulder and listened to the mud and rocks kick up under the skid plate.  It was drive by braillein the cloudy, black roads, and his shoulders screamed with the tension of it. The headlights swept a long, thin line through the chain link fence in front of him as he rounded the corner to the substation. For a good moment, he was sure Cas had left again. When the Harley finally kicked a cherry red kiss back at him, he wasn’t sure if it was just his concussion playing tag with his consciousness, or the real deal. 

Then, he saw him. Cas leaned against the bike, his body a postured black silhouette against the mushy grays in the field behind him. He looked a little too spunky for the level of cold in the air. He had his arms crossed, head tilted, one leg propped up as he sat at the edge of the seat. It all said: _just a little bit pissy and a whole helluvalot jilted_ , if Dean was being honest. Which wasn’t unreasonable, all things considered.

He pulled the Impala around, the tires creaking the gravel, and he threw it in park. Worried fingers begged at the hem of his jeans before he leaned through the car and popped the passenger door. “Get in,” he said, all mustered bravado.

Cas stayed put, just eying him through the yawned cabin, attention flitting through the back and then through the front again. He finally pulled off the bike, leaned on the frame.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice kissed in cold, the warmth bubbling up from the center of his chest. The overhead light caught his eyes, pinged off his swinging zipper pull, and the black leather ate it up. His hair was a mess. From wet to dry, then shoved into a helmet again for good measure, he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. The bright pink smack of cold on his cheeks and nose matched the tips of his fingers as they curled at the door’s edge.

Dean’s thoughts fell out of him. Fucking disappeared in a whirl down the drain. After a day of lamenting shit gone wrong, then right, then really wrong again, seeing Cas hanging in the door felt like a goddamn dream, and he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d had to call in a couple favors to get it.

“No,” he managed, and all he could think about were those lips. The way they jumped uneasy when his brow pulled down.

“Sam said you were hurt. Are you hurt?”

He wanted to pat the seat, ask Cas to crawl in next to him, slide up on the bench and find a warm spot by the heater. He wanted to say   _yes, but I’m good now. I did hurt, but fuck, just the sight of you makes me whole again._

“I know you lied,” he said instead.He watched Cas teeter at the door, his eyes hitting the leather seats and threading the seams before backing out. Shutting the door behind him with a rocking snap.

Dean stumbled for the pull, scrambled out. “But, I get _why_ you lied,” he said slapping the roof, catching Cas’ attention as his breath took shape in front of him in a huff. “I know you had good intentions. You were just tryin’ to make me feel like this wasn’t on me. You figured it was all on you, I wouldn’t get mad. I wouldn’t be embarrassed, or whatever. But, I need you to understand something.” He ditched the side of the car, the rocks crunching under his boots, and wasn’t sure what to do with himself when Cas was close enough to touch. Because, they’d stood like this earlier in the day, but as badly as Dean had wanted to lean into him--land that fucking kiss--he’d kept pulling away. Dean was all at once terrified this was going to be the instant replay.

“You were wrong when you said you knew how I really felt. When you said I didn’t… I couldn’t…” he heaved and couldn’t seem to string the words from the black pit in his heart.

“You were mind controlled, Dean,” Cas said quietly. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but that’s what it was.”

“Yeah, but the way I felt about you in that fucking motel room? Cas… it ain’t any different than I feel about you right now. Or, before all this shit happened. I mean. Yeah, maybe it was mind control, or whatever, but it was still pullin’ from somewhere.”

He watched Cas bite his lip, find something interesting, or enveloping in the mud below his feet, and Dean realized Cas was splattered in it. The side of the bike, up his suit pants. Mud like a Pollock painting. 

“I can’t accept that.” He found Dean’s eyes again, and carved a scar where they landed.

“Why?”

“Because the spell altered your thought process. The biophysical reaction--”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Then, why now? After all this time. Why now?”

And that was the sixty-four dollar question, wasn’t it? Dean couldn’t argue it, because Cas was right. He’d been at Dean’s side for years, and he’d been a close version of human for quite a bit of it. The only fucking difference was that goddamn love spell, and the blatant truth of it was: _now, because it changed my fucking thought process._

Dean choked down a chunk of bitterness. He figured he should be used to it by now, but this time it seemed extra big. 

_Whatever. Regroup. Fucking start again. Doesn’t matter why, only matters that it is._

“Listen, thing is, I thought you might be right. I left because I thought you were gonna cure the spell and I was gonna lose this--whatever this is.”

“I don’t care that you left. I understand why you left--”

“Just listen,” Dean begged. “I heard you earlier. Now it’s your turn in the other side of the confessional.”

Cas stiffened, those blue eyes catching a flash of the headlights again and falling wide.

“I didn’t think I could face you after that--disappoint you--but, Cas. I realized I was wrong--you were wrong. Cuz, this thing I got buried for you, it ain’t new. And maybe it took a friggin’ cupid spell to pull it outta me, but, I mean, come on, that’s kinda right in line with the usual, right? Pull teeth, get feelings.” He tried to smile, but the rigid fear in Cas snuffed it out.

“I don’t… I’m not...” Cas huffed again, his breath was fingers in the air, and his hair kicked up around his crown. There was no give in his face, just that farm-grown alarm. “I-I’m not right for you,” he said gravely.

_What? What the hell does that-- who the hell did you--?_

Dean was sure he’d swallowed a rock. He wasn’t sure where or when, but he must’ve ate one of the erratic boulders from northwest at some point. This was going to be it. _Fucking part ways. Nice try. Not in the books._

_No. Just, no. Don’t let him. It ain’t that easy._

“Sorry, Cas that ain’t for you to decide,” he minced. “Only I get to decide that. You said you wanted a spot on my double. Well, here it is. I’m pushing some shit off the side to make room. No more fucking around.”

Wide and arrested, Cas stared at him, his breath held up in his chest like a fucking hostage situation. “But, you don’t want me,” he croaked, echoing himself from earlier. It smacked Dean in the face again, stained _odd_ all the way down. _The wording. The repeat. Cas wasn’t saying what he meant._

“I do. That’s what I’m doing here. Why else would I be here?” 

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t give you what you deserve. I don’t know how.”

There it was. _There it fucking was._

Realization rushed him, and he actually had to step back. Physically and _fucking_ emotionally assess the situation. “Oh,” _shit,_ “ you’re scared.”

Cas’ red fingers curled into his coat again, an unsettled nod escaping him, so quick and jilty it could just as easily have been a tremor. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “You’re all I’ve got, Dean. I’d ruin it. I’d hurt you, and never even see it happening. I’d lose you, and Sam. I’d have nothing left. No family, no home, --and, I know I’m an angel and I don’t necessarily have to have a home, but I like having a home-- People would be unwilling to employ me because of my nearly complete lack of applicable work history, so I’d probably stay homeless, and I don’t have a car anymore because Metatron sto--”

Dean waved a hand, and it pulled Cas’ attention. Stopped the meltdown before Cas knew it was happening. His guard faltered as he tracked it and Dean lurched into him. Took the opportunity to steal a kiss. Hasty and innocuous, it was something fit for a relative, but it stunned Cas silent anyway. Stunned Dean himself, and they both flushed dumbstruck.

_Oh, God. Okay._

And, it was done.

All the dancing. All the posturing. They’d finally kissed, and there’d been no spell involved.

Just them. 

Cas’ cold lips and hot cheeks, Dean’s heater-warmed body and wet hair. They looked at each other a long moment, and then Dean realized that maybe he was making that same halted, wide face Cas was mirroring back at him. He found his feet again, wrung fingers into his coat, and dragged him close. The superficial personal space bubble popped. Neither one of them fought it, the comfort of their body heat mingled in the frost, and pulled them together like glue.

“Stop,” he begged watching Cas’ breath puff out in front of him, heavy. “Cas, just stop.” Dean muscled back the urge to run hands down his face. He just didn’t want to let go of that fucking coat. After an entire day of admiring it, getting his fingers into the leather felt like a wet dream. It was soft and smooth, age-worn and smelling like the bunker; fine whiskey and leaded gasoline.

“I don’t know shit about _deserve_ , okay? I don’t. But, I can tell you what I need, and maybe that won’t freak you out. Maybe you can deal with that.” He waited for Cas’ attention to settle, waited for him to find some comfort there before pressing. “I need you to stay,” he said delicately. “I need you--I want--stay… with me.”

Cas’ eyes danced hot through Dean’s face, and no matter how fucking dark it was, they always managed to suck him in. They were their own universe. There were worlds in there, and to have them laser-focused on him felt like a breath outside of time.

Then, Cas suddenly grabbed him back, unsteady hands running worried along his jaw, as if he was making sure Dean was really there. His fingers walking in all the places he seemed to have thought about a thousand times, making sure it wasn’t just a hallucination of his own. And Dean realized Cas had never touched him this way before. The look on his face, a compilation of fear and want he wasn’t sure what to do with, and Dean couldn’t help himself. He dragged another kiss out of him, soft and slow. Felt the cold night air Cas had bogged around him, as his fingers brushed through Dean’s hair, fell down his neck. It tossed chills through him, palpated his already amphetamine-high heart. 

Cas smelled about even with a fantasy. The hallucination had been right dead on about that. Dean could peg it from halfway across the damn field if he had to. Leather and gasoline. Leaves and cheap soap. Crisp and new and unrefined. 

He somehow smelled like hunting. Like road trips. Like bad diners. 

_Oh, God._

There was something so fundamentally different being with him now, versus before. The hallucinations, the over-bloated mental backfiring. It had thrummed up some kind of idealized teen fever-dream version of him that had been so empty. But, this Cas wasn’t all trailing hands and tempting touches. He was complex, and warm. Full and alive. This was the real deal. The chew of his stubble against Dean’s chin, the little huff of air that jumped through his nerves like stiff cotton; it was everything. It wasn’t just _something,_ or, _the beginning of something_. It was the better side of a decade in the making, and and it tasted just as heady as mulled wine. 

Dean soaked it in, hummed. Next to the Impala’s purr, it was barely a noise, but, up against Cas, it was an airhorn. The little strum of pleasure etched canyons in the energy around them. It coaxed something similar from the bottom of Cas throat, and the noise clipped into Dean’s nerves like lightning. He tried to lick his own lip, catch the spreading heat under his chin, but he tagged Cas’ lip instead, and Cas opened for it, his mouth was so wet and warm, it chased the chill down to Dean’s toes. 

Suddenly Dean was hard again, and not just working up to it. A full-on, _I gotta pull the zipper or readjust cuz shit don’t fit anymore_ kind of hard, and his fingers hinted to it. Grazed heavy down Cas’ jacket, finished light at the curve of his hip.

“Can I heal you?” Cas asked suddenly, the ruddy crackle at the end of his words yanking the blood in Dean closer to the surface. Plucking that tight-wound string holding him together like a harp.

He’d nearly forgotten. His body still ached, his head chimed like a stuck cuckoo clock, but it all seemed like back-burner material compared to what was between his lips. What was playing coy at the edge of his hips. “It’s just a flesh wound,” he puffed, a lithe smile taking hold.

“The majority of all injuries involve the flesh,” Cas deadpanned, and from this close, it squirmed Dean’s stomach. “You’re also bleeding.”

“It’s fine. Sam patched me up.”

“No,” Cas lifted a hand to him, and Dean realized his fingers were stained with blood. He’d soaked through the gauze, and could feel it rolling trails into the neck of his shirt again. A new swell of it with every throb at his temple. 

“Well, he always half-asses everything,” he conceded. 

Cas squinted, troubled the bandage with a nubbed nail. He’d found it now, hidden under Dean’s collar, he wasn’t going to let it go ignored. “What happened?”

“Bar fight,” Dean repeated, petting fingers down the front of him again, thinking about what was under there. That fucking long tie and neatly tucked shirt. Down further, the curve of muscle at his sides that sloped down to his hipbones. Dean squirmed in closer, something about Cas’ concern getting him hotter than he was prepared for. 

“This is from an angel blade.” 

“Okay, would you quit being so observant?”

“You found the cupid?”

_Yeah. The cupid. Nothing else. No one else._

Not, that he thought Cas would give him shit about it, but it didn’t stop the pang of guilt, either. If Dean hadn’t been playing a shitty game of _find-a-placeholder_ , it probably wouldn’t have seemed so much like a betrayal.

“Doesn’t matter. She said _hi_ ,” he cracked, “then, she said _bye_ , so--”

“You killed her?”

Dean hooked fingers in Cas’ belt loops. “Okay, can we reset? I need you to reset.” He caught Cas’ bottom lip again, licking a hot line into the bottom of it, and watched those magnetic eyes swing back to him, his chin lifting as playful curiosity crawled into his brow.

_Oh, shit. There’s a little dom there,_ Dean realized, and he hadn’t expected it to nearly take him out at the knees.

“Is that the second thing?” Cas asked quietly.

“What?”

“You need.”

“I need what?”

“No. The list of things you need. Is my resetting the second thing?”

Dean dodged back so he could get a good look at his face. “Is that a yes? Are you staying?”

“Is the list done? Just two things?”

He started to tell him that it wasn’t really a list, that it was just a figure of speech, but he stopped, the words corralled safely behind whatever part of him wanted to see this play out. Maybe the same part of him that was afraid Cas, _The King of Awkward,_ was still planning on saying no _._

“No. I need you to kiss me again,” Dean hazard impishly.

“You need me to stay. You need me to kiss you,” Cas reviewed. He moved a hand inside Dean’s coat, flirted fingers along the sides of his flannel, down Dean’s sides, slipping goosebumps into his skin. His eyes were curious and dark. Flitting through Dean and settling heavy at his waist, no tact in the way they hit that puffed edge in Dean’s pants. “Can I heal you?”

_You can do whatever the hell you want if you’d just kiss me again._ “Sure. Fine. Whatever.”

Cas pulled him in, laid a hand rough over Dean’s neck, and edged his mouth open with a wolfish tongue. Kissed him hard, and suddenly that sweet tang he’d tasted earlier was back again. The same sugary tingle, Dean realized, was grace all crowded up in Cas’ mouth, begging for someone to come swallow it. It moved through him rabid for his wounds, coiling in his stomach and ripping a firework through the base of his skull. He couldn’t stop the moan that escaped him. Didn’t really even try as the pain haze cleared and he was left with Cas’ heat. Smell. Fucking _taste_.

He’d never caught grace through the teeth before, and _holy shit_ , it was better than a dose of _E_ and a handful of lube. He gasped. His hot breath filled the air in bursts, condensing the cold between them. Dean realized quickly that they’d gone flush together. Dean writhing into him as his cock begged to finally get some relief. 

God he was needy for it. And fuck that kiss was enough to _Men-in-Black-style_ wipe all the bad memories from his mind. All his apprehensions and self-loathing. It was enough to _reset_ _him_ , and he was reduced to rubble. Immediately, totally, and utterly at the edge of begging for Cas’ fingers. 

_Fuck. Do it again. No. Do me. Do whatever the hell you want. Just keep touching me. Keep talking to me. I wanna hear that fucking gravel growl. I wanna feel it roll through me and reshape my guts like play-doh._

Dean clawed at Cas’ coat, whatever subtlety he’d tried to employ before, long lost at the edge of that goddamn leather. He tugged the slider, and listened to the zipper’s teeth clip open. It caught at the bottom stop, but that didn’t matter because Dean could get his hands inside now. He could feel the heat of Cas’ body all soaked into that white dress shirt. Cas’ tie tickling his hands and he greedily dove into it, slipped along his sides, fisting handfuls of cotton from the sweaty small of his back. 

_\--God, he’s sweating…_

_He’s fading…_

_He’s fucking fading--_

Dean tore at his tie, pulled it loose and lost it to the mud. Cas pitched into him. His eyes growing heavier as Cas’ hands staked their own claim around Dean’s waist, toying for a moment at his belt before slipping down the front of his jeans. The heel of his hand pertly catching the whole of Dean’s hard-on on the way through and rubbing a shock of pleasure into his gut.

Dean watched Cas’ lips part to whatever totally enraptured face--noise--Dean must have made, because that little smile he’d fantasized about back in the motel room was making its real life debut; Sticky intrigue all smothered in thirst, sitting on that pink mouth. 

A goddamn lust lipstick.

“Yeah,” Dean urged, because Cas could clearly see where this was going, but Dean wanted him to know that it was okay.

Then, again. Another swipe of Cas’ hand, down and up again, playing at the button on his jeans, lips tucking under the edges of his teeth. And, Dean knew it wasn’t going take much at this point, but looks like that were going to make everything happen a whole helluvalot quicker, and moves like that were going to make a mess on the inside of his jeans long before anything ever really got started.

So, Dean returned the favor, felt for himself at the front of Cas. His suit pants were doing little to nothing to hide his own hard-on from the world, and Dean wasn’t exactly sure why he was surprised by it, but he was. Maybe somewhere along the line, he’d convinced himself that Cas, _Angel of the Lord_ , heavenly virgin-- _mostly--_ just didn’t feel that way about anything. Couldn’t feel that way about anything. Didn’t swing left or right--as it were--but _this_ … Dean rubbed a hand down him again and let the nerve storm of excitement color him one shade darker pink. _This_ , said he was into it. He wanted it. He was thinking about Dean and that glorious fucking kiss exactly the same way. This told Dean that, _fading or not,_ Cas was more human than he was celestial. And he was suited up and ready for someone to call him off the bench.

“What else do you need, Dean?” he asked, kissing it into Dean’s jaw, that hand moving up again to pluck at his button.

_You,_ Dean thought, bucking into him, writhing against Cas’ cock. He made sure to feel the outline of it in the polyester-cotton blend. His fingers walking a brazen line over it, around it, as he kissed his neck.

That was his answer.

He pulled Cas’ belt from the loop and clipped his zipper down to the stop, but Cas snatched his hand, the fingers of his other stayed at Dean’s, steadfast at the buckle. Waiting. Deliberately stilled at the edge. 

Dean quickly realized this was a word game. Fingers and feelings and dicks were all well and good, but this required an explicit response. Body language wasn’t going to cut it. And even though Dean was writhing against him, he held that cocked eyebrow and steady gaze.

“You,” Dean huffed into the night, ripping his fingers from Cas’ grip and scooping a handful of him again. 

Cas licked a kiss into his mouth, easily undid Dean’s jeans, slipped inside. And, fuck if his hand wasn’t cold, but having it against him shoved a raw heat through Dean’s spine that could cook a goddamn marshmallow.

Cas fingered the top of Dean’s dick and dabbed at the bead of precome already sitting there, watched with an untamed curiosity as it strung from the tip, a sticky mess. He looked up at Dean and the expression parked on his face was some perversion of pride as he rolled a fist down him again. Just enough pressure, just enough speed. The way he waned the moment another trill of excitement built at the base… 

Dean quickly realized that this guy, not a lot of experience--as far as he knew, was _fallen_ enough now that he must’ve been working on his handy technique for himself. Tamping down his own lusty ache. Maybe alone in Dean’s room… at the bunker… maybe on Dean’s bed… that long neck pulling in perfect tandem with the swell of his chest as he worked himself. Listening to endlessly looped Led Zeppelin records while his eyes rolled back, and he _maybe_ thought about touching Dean.

The image ravaged him. He palmed Cas’ face and moved with his hand, desperation suddenly cramping at the base of his spine, and realized he needed him in the worst possible way. He needed Cas inside of him, to hold him, wanted Cas to control him, _own him._ And he’d already said it before he realized he was talking.

“I need you to fuck me,” he breathed, digging fingers into the meat at Cas’ sides. 

His chest twisted in an amalgamation of shame that Cas would do it, and fear that he wouldn’t.  But the contention wasn’t smothering enough to make him take it back, because, Dean had never fallen apart like this before. He’d never begged anyone to do that-- but no one else had a super special decoder ring to Dean’s psyche like Cas did. 

Cas hummed, popped back just enough to tip his head, that kicked eyebrow still sitting pretty on his face as his eye hit the Impala. Back to Dean. 

“You need me to stay,” he said, then suddenly hauled Dean back.

“Yes.” Dean stumbled with him, hit the car frame, bit a mark into Cas’ neck as Cas threw the passenger door open. Dean fell in, hit the seat and scrambled up on his elbows as Cas tugged his pants down. His stomach went down with them, got tangled up in his boots just the same.

“You need me to kiss you,” Cas repeated crawling in, knee between Dean’s legs, fumbling a shaky-- _shaky?--_ hand to the glove compartment and tugging it open. He pushed Dean’s shirt up and licked a hot line down his stomach, then swallowed his cock. Hot and smooth and wet, he just kept going until his nose was in Dean’s curlies, and the head of Dean’s dick was shoved nice and tight in the back of his throat. 

Dean whined, pulled fingers through Cas’ hair, arched off the seat. “Yes,” he begged as Cas came back up again just as suddenly, sucking a velvet curl all the way to the tip. He followed it up, biting kisses into Dean’s stomach, then kissed him hard. He had something in his hand. He’d pulled it from the glove box, and Dean couldn’t care less--he could be holding a goddamn Tribble for all it was worth-- except he realized, as Cas bit it and ripped it open, that it was a little pack of lube. One of the personal packs Dean had stashed in there for-- _reasons…_ and he hadn’t realized Cas knew it was there until now. Assumed, even if he’d seen it, he wouldn’t have understood what it was for.

_Oh, God._

“And you need me to fuck you,” he said finding Dean’s eyes, his face a hot flush. His lips on the brighter side of pink. His neck blotched red all the way under his chin.

_Jesus._

“Yes.”

Cas tugged one of Dean’s boots off, freed his leg from the tangle of clothes, and lifted it. Tossed it over his shoulder as Dean nervously pawed both hands at Cas’ chest, his heart flying dodgy. Warmth still pouring from the heater, but the open door whisking it all away. He blinked another wave of dizziness, but this time, he was sure it was just blood pressure instead of pink umbrellas and asphalt. 

Cas trailed a finger, wet with lube, down his perineum, pressing gently as he watched Dean’s face. As he slowly teased him open, and sunk in, his other hand dragging shivers down the outside of Dean’s thigh. Dean moaned, writhed, white knuckled the leather at Cas’ chest. It was the perfect mix of pleasure and ache. Of _dirty fucking wrong,_ and _so goddamn right._ His cock screamed to be touched, but Cas was occupied. 

“Do you need me to love you?” Cas asked, moving his finger now, searching with almost anatomical expertise for that sweet spot that was going to burn Dean out. And-- _shit--_ everything was getting away from him, because he was in no position to deal with this, but, Cas was only doing what Dean had dumbly asked. 

He was taking control. He was going to _fuck Dean_ , and maybe they weren’t going to get to the actual fucking because Dean was already about ready to pop, but Cas sure as hell was gonna sucker punch him in the feels while he had the chance. While Dean didn’t have any guff to pull from, and his deflector shields were down. 

“Answer honestly,” Cas encouraged his voice chipping with enough effort to tell him he was as poured into the moment as Dean was. 

So, Dean nodded, jilted and stiff. Because, if he was being honest, he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He sure as hell wasn’t gonna pull the words out, but, he’d bet the goddamn Impala, Cas was gonna get em anyway.

“Then, add it to your list,” Cas whispered.

_Fuck._

Dean writhed for Cas’ hand, begging for the touch, but Cas only ghosted over him, urged him, those blue eyes eating hungry through him as they waited.

Dean swelled, tears licking lines down both temples as he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“I need you…” he moaned.

Cas leaned into him, pet his dick again, chaste and quick. “To?” 

He worked a second finger inside. Slipped it in slowly, curling it up with the other as he moiled. 

Dean grit against the sharpness of the feeling. The unfamiliar, uncomfortable ache that quickly molted into an intimacy so personal, it pled at a side of him he hadn’t looked at in years.

“Love me--” he begged fisting handfuls of Cas’ shirt as he arched off the seat.

“I do,” Cas confessed without missing a beat. He dropped Dean’s leg, and stretched up over him again, moved his fingers deeper and kissed sweetness into his lips. “I love you, Dean.” 

Cas’ body grate Dean’s cock and he was done. It was all too much and he came hard. Gasped against Cas, buried his face in the crook of his neck as he pulled him down. Writhed. Muffled a groan in his shirt, that fucking leather coat hanging open just so Dean could feel the flex of Cas’ back as he moved with it, held Dean through it. Pressed their foreheads together.

Then, everything settled, slowed. 

The Impala’s rumble filtered in from the chaos, a quiet drone beside his unruly breath. And everything suddenly rushed him like an episode recap. The loneliness, the despair. That empty goddamn feeling that had him chasing his tail all day--all his life. That never ending ache of nothingness that had driven him, scarred him like a cattle brand as he told himself no one would ever love him, no one could ever love him. He’d never find it. Never have it.

But, here he was, and the emptiness was gone because Cas’ words had filled it, and his touch had sealed it shut.

Cas took a quick bite at his lower lip as he brushed another gentle kiss beside Dean’s eye. The dome light above them filtering yellow in the dark and kissing cream into the mist outside as Cas slid his fingers out. Dean closed his eyes, choked down a swallow, the day’s nightmare edging its way up and out, his floodgates pried open, and Dean was too fucking spent to try and shove them shut again.

_Fucking don’t,_ he thought as he covered his eyes, but it was too late. He gulped a sob, and felt the hot tears roll down his temples anyway. 

_Stop._

And that old familiar voice suddenly chimed in again. Told him once more that he didn’t deserve it. That it was all going to fall apart and this was just another bloated illusion. That he’d just fucked something up in the worst way by letting this happen. By taking advantage. By being weak. This was his personal hell. It always had been. The one he could never seem to get out of. Spurred by a lifetime of trying to be loved rather than feeling it, the erosion was past the point of no return. And that was why he hadn’t believe Cas when he’d pulled him out of hell all those years ago and told him he deserved it. 

_Because you’re different._

“You know, that was very lucky timing,” Cas said, that nonchalant cadence finding its way into his voice again. “The truth is, I orgasmed when you asked me to fuck you, so I probably couldn’t have gotten it in anyway.”

Dean choked, and sputtered a laugh. Swallowed tears as Cas pressed another kiss into his temple and tugged one of his hands away. Dean looked up at him, bleary eyed and naked in all possible ways, and found ground in his disheveled face. 

Here Cas was, pulling him out of hell again, and Dean realized that maybe neither one of them had made the connection before, but maybe Dean was different, because somehow together, they were so much more.

Dean tugged him into a hug, and didn’t stop him when he wiped some of Dean’s tears away.

“Just say come--or came,” Dean said because the silence was just too much. And those blue eyes, trained on him were just too sincere. 

“Came,” Cas repeated with a quiet smile. “In any case, I’ll do better next time.”

Dean mustered a shrug, started to tell Cas that he wasn’t complaining, but caught himself when he realized what Cas was really saying. “You’re staying?”

“Of course I’m staying.”

He swallowed that lump again, the threat of tears endlessly prickling in his eyes. “I guess we better get you decent then,” he managed, wiping a hand at the mess on Cas’ shirt, but Cas quickly caught him, mischievousness moving back into his face under the dim light. 

“This is mine,” he said gently, licking Dean’s fingertips.

Dean blinked. _Shit, there’s a lot of dom there,_ he realized, and it was a good thing he was already on his back, because this time, his knees would’ve gone out.

  
  
  



	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *edited 1/30/16

Epilogue

“Breakfast at J’s”

  
  


“I swear to God I’m dying,” Dean lamented lurching over his shoulder again and eying the kitchen. The waitress was nowhere to be found and they’d been sitting with bleeding plastic cups of water long enough, Dean’s was nearly gone. “I didn’t get to eat at all yesterday.”

“That’s because the spell stimulated your hypothalamus and triggered the limbic system. The drive for physical touch would have been incessant,” Cas muttered without looking up from his phone. He was thumbing through something, slumped forward, leering and squinting as the images brushed by.

“What?”

“The pleasure center,” he said glancing up. “Of your brain.”

“ You know, like those rats in the Skinner boxes who starved to death because they couldn’t stop pressing the  _ happy _ button,” Sam chirped from across the table, corners of his newspaper curling down. “You were a rat.”

“Exhaustion,” Cas said.

“What?”

He looked back at Dean and shrugged. “The rats died from exhaustion.”

“Okay, whatever. Shut up. Point is, the only thing I got to eat yesterday was one of Sam’s disgusting health bars I found under the seat. I mean, who knows how fucking old it was.”

“You clean the car out every week,” Sam sighed. “Was it a brownie one? I just bought the brownie ones.”

“No, I think it was made of plastic and despair. That’s what it tasted like anyway. It was ten years old and had a load of your hair in it, for all I know.”

“It was wrapped,” Cas said, eyes sliding up as his brows tucked down.

“Look, I’m just saying, this is gonna be awesome.”

J’s was empty. Faded floors and cracked vinyl seats. It smelled like the gas station it sat behind, and looked like a trucker’s pants. Not exactly pulling in the Sunday brunch crew. 

“I don’t know why you didn’t have breakfast before we left this morning,” Sam said, his newspaper crinkling as he dropped it again. “You didn’t have to wait til Kimball to eat if you were that hungry.”

“Yeah,” Dean scoffed, “and waste a perfectly good opportunity to have this little slice of pie be my first meal? I don’t think so.”

“What can I get you fellas?” the waitress asked, suddenly stepping up from the table and seemingly sliding up from the pit of hell.

Dean jumped. “You’re very quiet,” he muttered straightening.

She cleared her throat and spoke louder. “What can I get you fellas?”

“No…” Dean shook it out of his head. Let it slide. “Uh, Texas meat fry with scrambled eggs. Side of hash browns, and a, uh, coffee.” 

His stomach followed his order with an impatient growl, his lips turning north as he looked for the thick, syrupy pot. 

“Veggie omelet and coffee, please,” Sam said, referring the menu again before shaking the paper and turning a page.

The waitress jotted it down, and they all looked at Cas, his thumb ticking his phone, his face nearly sunk into the screen.

Dean cleared his throat and Cas glanced up, squinted, looked around.

“Food,” Dean whispered.

“Uh, no. I’m fine, thank you.”

“No, dude,” Dean bristled. “This is the coffee place, remember? You have to have coffee.”

“I was just going to have some of yours,” he said leaning in, whispering like the rest of the table couldn’t hear. Their shoulders touching and neither of them backing out of it.

“You can’t have mine,” Dean said. “I want mine.” He smiled up at the waitress again, blue hair and chipped glasses. Nobbed fingers curled around a tiny notebook with dogeared pages. “Just, coffees all around.”

“And eggs,” Cas said suddenly. 

Dean’s arms fell in a wide shrug. “You’re killing me.”

“I just saw it!” He reached across Dean and poked at his menu. “These eggs look good. I like eggs.”

“How you want ‘em cooked, sweety?” she smacked, tonguing a piece of gum, and still talking too loud. 

Sam smirked and buried his face back into the paper.

Cas’ brow curled up and he poked the menu again. “These,” he said gunning wide eyes to Dean like _I don’t know. How many varieties are there?_

“Scrambled,” Dean offered quickly, brushing his hand away. “Those are scrambled.”

“Yes,” Cas nodded quickly. “Sure. That. Scrambled.”

“Sure thing.” She tucked her pen and slipped off again, surprisingly light on her feet. Dean watched her disappear through the porthole-windowed doors and vanish into the kitchen, then sighed again, legs impatiently bouncing under the table. 

“You guys are weirding me out,” Sam said bluntly.

Dean glanced at Cas who’d sunk back into his phone, then to Sam. “How? What the hell’d I do?”

“It’s too normal. You’re both too normal.”

“Oh, I’m sorry did you want it to be freaky? Like making out all the time or something?” He felt Cas side eye him, and he quickly shook his head. 

_No. Please don’t…_ and Cas slumped back against the seat.

“No, but with Mr. Roboto over here, I was kinda expecting it,” Sam admitted eyebrows high as Cas frowned into the glow of his screen.“Honestly… you haven’t like… been together awhile have you? Or, like… before?”

Dean scoffed. “What the fuck? Yeah. Ya caught me. The whole shit-show yesterday was all a giant ruse because we weren’t sure how to break it to you.”

“Okay,” Sam surrendered, hands pulling off the table. “I just thought it would be more weird. Like transition necessary or something.”

“Give it time, Sammy. Everything gets weirder with time.”

Sam nodded. Sipped his water, and closed the paper. The mischief still bouncing through his face, his teeth working some savory thought through his mouth. “Hey, uh, where’s your tie this morning, Cas?”he asked suddenly.

Dean huffed. “Sam…” 

“Dirty,” Cas said without looking up.

“Ah.” He took another long drink. Poked at an errant sugar packet. “Is that--is that Dean’s shirt? It looks like Dean’s shirt. Where’s yours?”

Cas looked down, a black tee was peeking through his loose-zipped leather. “Dirty,” he said again with just as much enthusiasm in his face.

Sam squinted and brushed off Dean’s glare. 

“How would someone even get into this position,” Cas asked suddenly, leaning into Dean and turning his phone. Two men were tangled together, standing, head over ass and vice versa, contorted into something dubbed _The Standing Sixty-Nine_. 

Dean’s eyebrows shot up. _Oh, dear God, he’s gonna break me._ “I… don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe don’t start with the black diamond stuff.”

“Are you--” Sam’s voice went up three octaves and Dean knew the shit was about to hit the fan. “Are you looking at porn?” He strained forward, ripped the phone from Cas’ hand. 

“Don’t look at that,” Dean warned, but of course, he did anyway, eyes hitting the screen about as quick as they bounced back off.

“Geeze--just--” He locked it, set it down, then picked it up again, as if somehow the image was going to seep back out of the black. “Cas, you can’t just look at porn in a restaurant,” he whispered, high and thin.

Cas looked around. “Why?”

Dean smiled as Sam’s face pulled sour. 

“Because you’re in public!” he griped.

“No one could see it. There’s no one else even in here right now.”

“I saw it!”

“Ah,” Dean held up a finger and grabbed the phone back. “You were warned.”

Suddenly the waitress came out of nowhere again, slid three mugs down and filled them, burnt coffee filling Dean’s nose. He watched as everyone sat stiff and silent, Cas glancing nervously over to her then back to Sam. 

“Thanks,” Dean offered quickly. She looked through them, nodded, then shuffled away.

They all watched after her, and once she’d disappeared into the kitchen again, Sam threw himself forward. “What if she’d seen?”

Dean sighed. “And she’d what? Wait on us even slower? Relax. She didn’t see anything.”

“Thank you both for righting my world again. I lived a whole thirty seconds thinking this wasn’t gonna be weird.”

“Shut up and read your paper. Quit being a bitch. You don’t get to dig, then act all violated when you find something.”

“Also, maybe don’t look at the porn,” Cas offered, grabbing Dean’s cup and taking a sip. He looked between them. “Good coffee, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm winchester-reload on tumblr
> 
> Thanks for the read!


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